Somerset Island
- Terra MODIS
- 31 July 2006
- 19:10 UTC
Somerset Island lies immediately northwards from the mainland's Boothia Peninsula (which contains the northernmost point of mainland North America — Zenith Point, on the Murchison Promontory), from which it is separated by the 2 km wide Bellot Strait. To the west, across the Peel Sound, lies Prince of Wales Island and to the east, across the Prince Regent Inlet, the Brodeur Peninsula of western Baffin Island. The northern coast of the island faces the Barrow Strait section of the Parry Channel, Cornwallis Island and Devon Island. The island forms part of the Qikiqtaaluk region of Nunavut.
Somerset Island overs an area of 24,786 km², ranking as the twelfth largest island of Canadian territory. The island is approximately rectangular in shape, with the large Creswell Bay on the southeast coast reducing the islands width as it narrows to a "panhandle" that extends southwards to the Boothia Peninsula.
As is clearly evident in the accompanying images, the terrain on the island can be divided into two distinct regions: a plateau region with a bedrock of sedimentary rocks (light-coloured in the above image) on the east and northeast (part of the Lancaster Plateau formation) and an upland area of older granitic rocks on the southwest (darker-coloured in the above image). The limestone plateau is generally flat with elevations ranging from 300 to 400 m above sea level and has been greatly eroded by numerous river channels. Highest elevations are found in the upland areas of the east, among a line of hills located to the northeast of Fiona Lake — located north from the permanently frozen Stanwell Fletcher Lake (near the centre of the above image) — where an elevation of 503 m above sea level is reached.
Located off the varied coastline (tall cliffs, coastal wetlands, steep-sided inlets and wide bays) lie many smaller islands. The largest of these include the 63 km², cliff-bound, Prince Leopold Island (site of the Prince Leopold Island Bird Sanctuary), located off the northeastern tip of Somerset Island, and several islands that lie in the Peel Sound between the Howe Bay and Four Rivers Bay areas of the west coast.
image: MODIS rapid response project at nasa/goddard space flight center
