Victoria Island
- MODIS image
- 08 July 2003
- 03:15 UTC
At 217,291 km² in area Victoria Island is the second largest of Canada's Arctic islands and the world's ninth
largest. It is located in the low Arctic zone separated from the Canadian mainland by the Dolphin & Union Strait
in the west, the Coronation Gulf on the southwest, the Dease Strait in the south and by the Queen Maud Gulf in the
southeast. To the west, 12.5 km across the Prince of Wales Strait, lies Banks Island, to
the west, across the McClintock Channel, Prince of Wales Island and off the southeast,
across the Victoria Strait, King William Island.
The island has an irregular outline scuplted by numerous deep bays and inlets separated by large peninsuals. The largest of these peninsulas inlcude the Wollaston Peninsula in the southwest (formed by the Minto Inlet on the north and the Prince Albert Sound on the south), the Prince Albert Peninsula in the northwest, the Storkerson Peninsula in the east (between Hadley Bay and Stefansson Island) and the Collinson Penninsula in the east. Victoria Island has a maximum east to west extent of km and a maximum of km from north to south.
Much of the island's terrain is low-lying in nature, particularly so in the southeastern sector. The lake-studded plains of the southeast — known as the Victoria Lowlands — gradually give way to an upland area of rugged hills in the northwest that eventually levels off to form an elevated plateau in the far northwest with average elevations of between 300 m and 500 m above sea level. The island's highest point of 655 m is reached in the Shaler Mountains.
image: MODIS rapid response project at nasa/goddard space flight center.
