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Smallest Islands?

T

Trevp666

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I was looking for a story about a team that had gone to measure 'The worlds smallest island' and when they got there and measured it, they were just about to leave when they spotted another island nearby which was even smaller.
I couldn't find that story, but while looking I did discover this item about "The worlds smallest inhabited island"
Called "Just Room Enough Island" it is big enough for just the one house to be built on it, and not a lot else.
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https://theculturetrip.com/north-am...s-the-smallest-inhabited-island-in-the-world/
 
Kondoru said:
What do they do when it floods or is that part of the appeal?
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It could well be on a lake with an outlet, which means it never floods. I don’t think you’d build there otherwise.
 
The house in the distance is just as low. Points to flooding not being a major problem. It’s built on what looks like a solid rocky base. You'd have to be pretty hardy to live there full time though.
 
hunck said:
The house in the distance is just as low. Points to flooding not being a major problem. It’s built on what looks like a solid rocky base. You'd have to be pretty hardy to live there full time though.
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Boathouses? so neccessarily at water level.
 
Popping out for a pint of milk might be a bit of a problem. As would be just going out for a walk. Imagine saying to the wife, or husband, I'm just going out to get a packet of crisps.....
 
This photo shows the island when the river is high (yes, it's the same house - it foxed me at first but it looks very different from different angles - see second photo)

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I wonder if the stone at the bottom does something against flooding. Also note the sandbags around the door in the first photo.

It's one of the 'Thousand Islands' of sauce fame, in upstate New York.

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This mini island house is on the river Drina, Serbia. According to Wikipedia, it has been destroyed by high water seven times and rebuilt - the definition of stubborn.

This question gets very difficult because it's hard to define the lower limit of what an island is. Is a bit of rock sticking out of the water at the beach an island? The word 'islet' may be used to describe a tiny island that is too small to support vegetation or habitation.

Famously, the UK sent SAS veteran Tom McClean to live on Rockall for 40 days in the 80s to prove that it was 'habitable' and thus stake a claim to the surrounding waters for fishing etc. Since then, others have 'lived' on it for longer stretches of time. But really?

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James_H said:
This photo shows the island when the river is high (yes, it's the same house - it foxed me at first but it looks very different from different angles - see second photo)

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I wonder if the stone at the bottom does something against flooding. Also note the sandbags around the door in the first photo.
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Yes the sandbags are a good indicator of protection from flooding. Also it looks like the dock is under water.

Wonder what time of year these pics are taken in. It has to be late spring/summer as the tree has leaves but they are not autumn colours.

Winter and spring would be times most likely for flooding.
 
brownmane said:
Yes the sandbags are a good indicator of protection from flooding. Also it looks like the dock is under water.

Wonder what time of year these pics are taken in. It has to be late spring/summer as the tree has leaves but they are not autumn colours.

Winter and spring would be times most likely for flooding.
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It could be the May of either 2017 or 2019, as both years had major flooding events on the St. Lawrence River. source: https://ijc.org/en/loslrb/watershed/2017-and-2019-high-water-events
 
Kondoru said:
Who was it defined an Island as somewhere that had enough grass for a sheep? (or was it two sheep?)

I know Suliseiger and the Bishops off of West Wales have been used as such.
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“…an island is a body of land surrounded by water. That definition comes with an upper limit—“smaller than a continent.” But now we have to define the lower one: how big does an island have to be in order to differentiate it from, in Royle’s words, “a mere rock”? For some, the answer is qualitative: according to Royle, Vikings didn’t think something was an island until it was far enough from the mainland that a ruddered ship was required, while 19th century Scotlanders defined it as a patch of land with enough pasture to support at least one sheep.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-makes-an-island

Scotlanders?

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
“…an island is a body of land surrounded by water. That definition comes with an upper limit—“smaller than a continent.” But now we have to define the lower one: how big does an island have to be in order to differentiate it from, in Royle’s words, “a mere rock”? For some, the answer is qualitative: according to Royle, Vikings didn’t think something was an island until it was far enough from the mainland that a ruddered ship was required, while 19th century Scotlanders defined it as a patch of land with enough pasture to support at least one sheep.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-makes-an-island

Scotlanders?

maximus otter
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When does a heap of sand stop being a heap of sand?
 
Kondoru said:
Who was it defined an Island as somewhere that had enough grass for a sheep? (or was it two sheep?)

I know Suliseiger and the Bishops off of West Wales have been used as such.
Click to expand...

I can find almost no reference to Suliseiger online.

Could you possibly provide more information?
 

Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn’t know it had​

Digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) recently found there to be 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the figure of 6,852 that has been in official use since a 1987 report by Japan’s Coast Guard.

However, the GSI this week stressed that the new figure reflected advances in surveying technology and the detail of the maps used for the count – it did not change the overall area of land in Japan’s possession.

It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago.

That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).
The new number does not include any artificially reclaimed land.

The islands surrounding Japan have been at the heart of several territorial disputes.

Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories, a dispute that dates to the end of World War II, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan.

Japan also says it has a historical claim to the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which it currently administers, but China has repeatedly challenged that claim.

Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea remain locked in a more than 70-year dispute over the sovereignty of a group of islets known as Dokdo by Seoul and Takeshima by Tokyoin the Sea of Japan, which Korea calls the East Sea.
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Still struggling over what is an island and what is just a rock? Does building a house on a rock make it an island?
 
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