Lam Chau () was a former island in Hong Kong. It was one of the two original

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 ...

s that made up the site of the current

Hong Kong International Airport Hong Kong International Airport is an international airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok in western Hong Kong. The airport is also referred to as Chek Lap Kok International Airport or Chek Lap Kok Airport, to distinguish it from its predec ...

. This small island lay to the west of

Chek Lap Kok Chek Lap Kok is an island in the western waters of Hong Kong's New Territories. Unlike the smaller Lam Chau, it was only partially leveled when it was assimilated via land reclamation into the island for the current Hong Kong International ...

and north of

Lantau Island Lantau Island (also Lantao Island, Lan Tao or Lan Tau) is the largest island in Hong Kong, located west of Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula, and is part of the New Territories. Administratively, most of Lantau Island is part of the ...

. It had an area of and was long. It had a narrow rocky shoreline and small hills (less than tall) covered by vegetation and shrubs. Like Chek Lap Kok, geologically, Lam Chau consisted of

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

. During 1992-1996, the island was flattened and joined with Chek Lap Kok, to form the island that the Hong Kong International Airport is located on, by

land reclamation Land reclamation, often known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lake ...

. The former island is now part of the southwest side of the airport grounds, located close to the western end of the south runway.

References

* {{Use dmy dates, date=December 2019 Islands District