Shackleton Ice Shelf on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Shackleton Ice Shelf is an extensive ice shelf fronting the coast of East Antarctica from 95° E to 105° E. It extends for an along-shore distance of about , projecting seaward about in the western portion and in the east. It occupies an area of . It is part of Mawson Sea and separates the Queen Mary Coast to the west from the Knox Coast of Wilkes Land to the east.
Shackleton Ice Shelf is an extensive ice shelf fronting the coast of East Antarctica from 95° E to 105° E. It extends for an along-shore distance of about , projecting seaward about in the western portion and in the east. It occupies an area of . It is part of Mawson Sea and separates the Queen Mary Coast to the west from the Knox Coast of Wilkes Land to the east.
Discovery and naming
The existence of this ice shelf was first made known by the USEE under Charles Wilkes who mapped a portion of it from the '' Vincennes'' in February 1840. It was explored by the Australian Antarctic Expedition under Douglas Mawson (1911–14) who named it for SirErnest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarcti ...
. The extent of the ice shelf was mapped in greater detail in 1955, using aerial photography obtained by US Navy Operation Highjump
Operation HIGHJUMP, officially titled The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946–1947, (also called Task Force 68), was a United States Navy (USN) operation to establish the Antarctic research base Little America (exploration b ...
, 1946–47. Further mapping by the Soviet Expedition of 1956 showed the portion eastward of Scott Glacier to be a part of this ice shelf.
Important Bird Area
A 500 ha site () on the ice shelf has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding colony of some 6,500emperor penguin
The emperor penguin (''Aptenodytes forsteri'') is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is Endemism in birds, endemic to Antarctica. The male and female are similar in plumage and size, reaching in length and weighing fr ...
s, based on 2009 satellite imagery.
See also
* List of glaciers * List of Antarctic ice shelves * Chugunov IslandReferences
External links
* {{Portal bar, Birds, Geography, Earth sciences, Weather Important Bird Areas of Antarctica Penguin colonies Ice shelves of Antarctica Bodies of ice of Queen Mary Land Bodies of ice of Wilkes Land