Roosevelt Island, Antarctica
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Roosevelt Island is the second largest
ice rise An ice rise is a clearly defined elevation of the otherwise very much flatter ice shelf, typically dome-shaped and rising several hundreds of metres above the surrounding ice shelf . An ice rise forms where the ice shelf touches the seabed due ...
of Antarctica and world-wide, after Berkner Island. Despite its name, it is not an
island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...
, since the bedrock below the ice at its highest part is below sea level. It is about long in a NW-SE direction, wide and about in area, lying under the eastern part of the
Ross Ice Shelf The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (, an area of roughly and about across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than long, and between high ...
of
Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...
. Its central ridge rises to about above sea level, but this and all other elevations of the ice rise are completely covered by ice, so that it is invisible at ground level. Examination of how the ice flows above it establishes the existence and extent of the ice rise. Radar surveying carried out between 1995 and 2013 showed that the
Raymond Effect Raymond Effect is a flow effect in ice sheets, occurring at flow divides, which gives rise to disturbances in the stratigraphy, showing unusual arches or anticlines called ''Raymond Arches''. The stratigraphy is detected by radio-echo sounding. T ...
was operating beneath the
ice divide An ice divide is the boundary on an ice sheet, ice cap or glacier separating opposite flow directions of ice, analogous to a water divide. Ice divides are important for geochronological investigations that use ice cores, since such coring is typic ...
. The ice rise has become a focus of the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) research using ice coring. Rear Admiral
Richard E. Byrd Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer, and pioneering aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader cr ...
named it in 1934 after US President
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...
. Byrd was the
leader Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...
of the expedition that discovered the ice rise. Roosevelt Island lies within the boundaries of the
Ross Dependency The Ross Dependency is a region of Antarctica defined by a circular sector, sector originating at the South Pole, passing along longitudes 160th meridian east, 160° east to 150th meridian west, 150° west, and terminating at latitude 60th para ...
,
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
's Antarctic claim.


See also

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Composite Antarctic Gazetteer The Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (CGA) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) is the authoritative international gazetteer containing all Antarctic toponyms published in national gazetteers, plus basic information about th ...
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SCAR A scar (or scar tissue) is an area of fibrosis, fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after an injury. Scars result from the biological process of wound repair in the skin, as well as in other Organ (anatomy), organs, and biological tissue, t ...
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Territorial claims in Antarctica Seven sovereign states – Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom – have made eight land claim, territorial claims in Antarctica. These countries have tended to place their Antarctic scientific observat ...


References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Ice rises of Antarctica Geography of the Ross Dependency Bodies of ice of the Ross Dependency