Berkner Island (also known as the Berkner Ice Rise or as Hubley Island) is an Antarctic

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 t ...

, where bedrock below sea level has caused the surrounding ice sheet to create a dome. If the ice cap were removed, the island would be underwater. Berkner Island is completely ice-covered and is about long and wide, with an area of . It is surrounded by the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. The northernmost point of the Berkner is about from the open sea. It lies in the overlapping portion of the Argentine and the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Antarctic territorial claims. The island rises to ( according to other sources) and separates the Ronne Ice Shelf from the

Filchner Ice Shelf Wilhelm Filchner (13 September 1877 – 7 May 1957) was a German army officer, scientist and explorer. He conducted several surveys and scientific investigations in China, Tibet and surrounding regions, and led the Second German Antarctic Expeditio ...

. It is characterized by two domes, ''Reinwarthhöhe'' in the north (), and ''Thyssenhöhe'' in the south (). It is indented by three bays on the eastern side, which are, from north to south, the McCarthy Inlet, the Roberts Inlet, and the Spilhaus Inlet. The southern tip is named the Mulvaney Promontory. Gould Bay is on the north coast. Berkner Island is about west of

Luitpold Coast Luitpold Coast (german: Prinzregent-Luitpold-Land) is that portion of the coast of Coats Land extending from the vicinity of Hayes Glacier, at 27°54′W, to 36°W, which is regarded as the eastern limit of the Filchner Ice Shelf. It was discov ...

Coats Land Coats Land is a region in Antarctica which lies westward of Queen Maud Land and forms the eastern shore of the Weddell Sea, extending in a general northeast–southwest direction between 20°00′W and 36°00′W. The northeast part was discove ...

, the closest mainland of

Eastern Antarctica East Antarctica, also called Greater Antarctica, constitutes the majority (two-thirds) of the Antarctic continent, lying on the Indian Ocean side of the continent, separated from West Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains. It lies almos ...

. The

Hemmen Ice Rise Hemmen Ice Rise () is an ice rise long and wide, with an estimated area of , located off the northwest corner of Berkner Island in the Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica. The feature appears for the first time on a chart prepared at Ellsworth Station i ...

is off the northwest corner of Berkner Island.

History

Berkner Island was discovered by members of the United States- International Geophysical Year party from

Ellsworth Station Ellsworth Scientific Station ( es, Estación Científica Ellsworth, or simply ''Estación Ellsworth'' or ''Base Ellsworth'') was a permanent, all year-round originally American, then Argentine Antarctic scientific research station named after Ame ...

during the 1957–1958 season. It was named by the

United States Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica. History The committee was established ...

for

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

physicist

Lloyd Berkner Lloyd Viel Berkner (February 1, 1905 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – June 4, 1967 in Washington, D.C.) was an American physicist and engineer. He was one of the inventors of the measuring device that since has become standard at ionospheric stations ...

, engineer with the

Byrd Antarctic Expedition Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer and explorer. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, p ...

(1928–1930). Since 1990, Berkner Island has been a jumping off point for a number of long distance polar expeditions. Ben Saunders has planned an unsupported journey from the island to the South Pole and back, and it was the start point of Henry Worsley's attempt to cross the Antarctic in 2015–16. In the 1994–1995 field season the British Antarctic Survey (BAS),

Alfred Wegener Institute The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (German: ''Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung'') is located in Bremerhaven, Germany, and a member of the Helmholtz Association o ...

and the Forschungsstelle für Physikalische Glaziologie of the

University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of stud ...

cooperated in a project drilling ice cores on the North (''Reinwarthhöhe'') and South (''Thyssenhöhe'') Domes of the island.NASA.gov
PALEOCLIMATE, LAND+RECORDS, BOREHOLES&OrigMetadataNode=GCMD&EntryId=89738616867620&MetadataView=Full&MetadataType=0&lbnode=mdlb3 Between 2002 and 2005 a core was drilled through to the bed at ''Thyssenhöhe'' by a team from BAS and the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environnement,

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

, and radar work in 2005 and 2010-11 confirmed the existence of the Raymond Effect.

Important Bird Area

A 500 ha site on fast ice north of the area where the Ronne Ice Shelf joins the north-western coast of Berkner Island, about to the northwest of Gould Bay, has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports an emperor penguin colony. The size of the colony was estimated as about 8,000 individual birds, based on 2009 satellite imagery.

References

External links

* {{Authority Control Important Bird Areas of Antarctica Penguin colonies British Antarctic Territory Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf Ice rises of Queen Elizabeth Land

History

Important Bird Area

See also

References

External links