My OperaSeven Hills, Semisopochnoi, Alaska
Saturday, January 1, 2011 9:17:40 AM
Rome is not the only place having seven hills. The easternmost land location in the United States is an island with seven hills, and that is actually what the name of the island means. It is called Semisopochnoi, from Russian: Семисопочный – "having seven hills". That is has a Russian name may not be so surprising as the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867. Now that we are talking about the US buying foreign territory, the US also bought a few Danish islands in the Caribbean in 1917 - the Virgin Islands consisting of the main islands of Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas, along with other surrounding minor islands - but that is another story. Now back to Semisopochnoi.
The seven hills of the island are volcanic peaks, each with a summit crater, including Cerberus, Sugarloaf Peak, Lakeshore Cone, Anvil Peak, Pochnoi, Ragged Top, and Three-quarter Cone. The high point of the island is Anvil Peak at 1,221 m, a double-peaked cone. The three-peaked Mount Cerberus volcano (774 m high) grew up within the caldera as the volcano rose up from the sea floor. Most documented eruptions have come from Cerberus, with the most recent major eruption recorded in 1873. The most recent eruption on the island, though minor, came from Sugarloaf in 1987.
Semisopochnoi is one of the Aleutian Islands, a chain of more than 300 small volcanic islands, forming part of the Aleutian Arc in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The Aleutian arc extends about 3,000 km from the Gulf of Alaska to Kamchatka. It marks the region where the Pacific plate subducts into the mantle beneath the North American plate. This subduction is responsible for the generation of the Aleutian Islands and the deep offshore Aleutian Trench. Relative to a fixed North American plate, the Pacific plate is moving north-west at a rate that increases from 6.6 cm per year in the arc's eastern region to 8.6 cm per year near its western edge. In the east, the convergence of the plates is nearly perpendicular to the plate boundary. However, because of the boundary's curvature, as one travels westward along the arc, the subduction becomes more and more oblique to the boundary until the relative plate motion becomes almost parallel to the boundary at its western edge.
Semisopochnoi Island is uninhabited and provides an important nesting area for maritime birds, it supports more than a million seabirds, particularly auklets.
The seven hills of the island are volcanic peaks, each with a summit crater, including Cerberus, Sugarloaf Peak, Lakeshore Cone, Anvil Peak, Pochnoi, Ragged Top, and Three-quarter Cone. The high point of the island is Anvil Peak at 1,221 m, a double-peaked cone. The three-peaked Mount Cerberus volcano (774 m high) grew up within the caldera as the volcano rose up from the sea floor. Most documented eruptions have come from Cerberus, with the most recent major eruption recorded in 1873. The most recent eruption on the island, though minor, came from Sugarloaf in 1987.
Semisopochnoi is one of the Aleutian Islands, a chain of more than 300 small volcanic islands, forming part of the Aleutian Arc in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The Aleutian arc extends about 3,000 km from the Gulf of Alaska to Kamchatka. It marks the region where the Pacific plate subducts into the mantle beneath the North American plate. This subduction is responsible for the generation of the Aleutian Islands and the deep offshore Aleutian Trench. Relative to a fixed North American plate, the Pacific plate is moving north-west at a rate that increases from 6.6 cm per year in the arc's eastern region to 8.6 cm per year near its western edge. In the east, the convergence of the plates is nearly perpendicular to the plate boundary. However, because of the boundary's curvature, as one travels westward along the arc, the subduction becomes more and more oblique to the boundary until the relative plate motion becomes almost parallel to the boundary at its western edge.
Semisopochnoi Island is uninhabited and provides an important nesting area for maritime birds, it supports more than a million seabirds, particularly auklets.
- http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=48154
- http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1101-06-
- http://www.avo.alaska.edu/volcanoes/volcinfo.php?volcname=semisopochnoi
simoncito # Tuesday, January 4, 2011 9:58:18 AM
Whatever made the Danish government sell those Caribean islands? They must be wonderful places. :-)
By the way, not all those swaps were business deals: Mount Kilimanjaro was once given to the German "Kaiser" Wilhelm 1. as a birthday present from Queen Victoria. The people acutally inhabiting the real estate involved probably weren't asked, I suppose ...
Ole Nielsennielsol # Tuesday, January 4, 2011 10:56:27 AM
Today the United States Virgin Islands are indeed a very nice place for tourists. And the tourists bring loads of money to the islands. In 1917 Denmark saw them as no longer profitable (since 1848 when slavery was abolished). The islands were also offered to ‘der Deutsche Bund’ at an earlier stage (either for money or as part of a swapping deal, I am not quite sure), but the German Confederation was apparently not sufficiently interested. So Germany ‘missed the boat’! The idea of selling the islands was discussed in the Danish parliament as from 1852.
It is extremely sad that the inhabitants of the islands had no say in this matter. Where were the human rights?
Actually I once met one of the former (black) inhabitants of the Danish Virgin Islands, who had immigrated to Denmark, (but that meeting must be something like half a century ago).
simoncito # Tuesday, January 4, 2011 11:31:41 AM
Strange, one always thinks about a fixed "north" and "south", however - even though Greenland lies to the relative north of Mid-Siberia (the Lebtev sea, e.g.) - you have to go due north, cross the North Pole and beyond, to go there ...
Ole Nielsennielsol # Tuesday, January 4, 2011 2:02:50 PM