The Shelonsky Islands (, Shelonskiye Ostrova) is an island group in the

Sakha Republic Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, and the largest federal subject of Russia by area. It is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million ...

(Yakutia),

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. They are located in the

Laptev Sea The Laptev Sea () is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya, and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with ...

and are subject to severe Arctic weather with frequent gales and blizzards. There are no settlements on the islands.

Geography

The Shelonsky Islands are part of the coastal lowlands of the

Yana Bay The Yana Bay (; ''Yanskiy Zaliv'') is a body of water in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russian Federation. It is the most important gulf of the Laptev Sea. Geography The bay is located between Cape Buor-Khaya in the west and Ebelyakh Bay in th ...

, east of the mouths of the

Chondon The Chondon (; ) is a river in Ust-Yansky District, Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russia. It is long, with a drainage basin of . The Chondon mammoth was discovered in 2013 in the Chondon basin, at the feet of the Polousny Range, 66 km south-west of ...

river and west of

Sellyakh Bay Sellyakh Bay (; ) is a bay in Ust-Yansky District, Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russian Federation.Google Earth There are no settlements in the bay area, the nearest inhabited place is Tumat to the south. Formerly there was a temporary Polar statio ...

. They are marshy and flat. The coastal area off which these islands lie, is an extensive

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

zone. Further north, the sea in the Yana Bay is frozen with thick ice for about eight months yearly, so that these coastal islands are merged with the mainland most of the year.Polynyas and frozen surface in the Laptev Sea during the winter

Islands

*The largest is Vostochnyy Shelonsky, it is located on the northern shores of the Manyko Peninsula (Poluostrov Manyko). This island has a length of 17 km and a maximum width of 7.2 km. Vostochnyy has many small lakes and becomes narrower towards its eastern end. East of this island lies a deep inlet stretching southwards known in Russian as Sellyakhskaya Guba. *Zapadnyy Shelonsky Island is much smaller, being only 2.5 km across. It lies off Vostochnyy's western tip, separated from it by a 2 km wide sound. *Yuzhnyy Shelonsky lies detached from the main group, 20 km further to the west, off the NE shores of Yarok Island. It is 3 km long and 0.7 km wide. *There are a few other small unnamed islands in the group, all of them close to Vostochnyy.

References

External links

Permafrost and formation of thermokarst lakes
Archipelagoes of the Laptev Sea Archipelagoes of the Sakha Republic {{SakhaRepublic-geo-stub