Location Kara Sea Highest elevation 5 m (16 ft) Population uninhabited Area 153.9 km² | Width 12 km (7.5 mi) Oblast Tyumen Oblast Elevation 5 m Max length 42 km | |
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Okrug Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug | ||
Vilkitsky Island, (Russian: Остров Вильки́цкого; Ostrov Vil'kitskogo) is an island in the Kara Sea. It is located 40 km northeast of Shokalskogo Island, off the tip of the Gydan Peninsula in North Siberia. T
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Map of Vilkitsky Island, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia, 629372
This island is not to be confused with other islands called "Vilkitsky", such as the small Vilkitsky group (now mentioned as Dzhekman Islands in most maps) which is part of the Nordenskjold Archipelago, the Vilkitsky Islands located in the Laptev sea off the eastern shores of the Taymyr Peninsula, and also Vilkitsky Island in the De Long Group in the Eastern Siberian Sea.
Geography
Vilkitsky Island is bleak and windswept and is covered with tundra. The island is crescent-shaped and it is divided in two by a narrow sound in its midst. It is 42 km in length but only 12 km wide at its broadest zone.
The sea surrounding this island is covered with pack ice in the winter and there are numerous ice floes even in the summer. There is a large shallow area between Vilkitsky Island and its southern neighbor, Neupokoyev Island (Остров Неупокоева), named after Konstantin Neupokoev (1884—1924), a naval officer, hydrographer and explorer of the Russian Hydrographic Service in Soviet times.
Vilkitsky Island belongs to the Tyumen Oblast administrative division of the Russian Federation. It is also part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve, the largest nature reserve of Russia.
This island is named after Russian hydrographer Boris Vilkitsky's father Andrey Vilkitsky, while the Vilkitsky Islands in the Laptev sea are named after Russian hydrographer Boris Vilkitsky himself.