Cornwallis Island
- Terra MODIS
- 08 July 2003
- 03:15 UTC
A member of the Parry Islands group, Cornwallis Island lies near the centre of the entire Arctic Archipelago located 28 km west across the Wellington Channel from southwestern Devon Island and 51 km north across the Barrow Strait from Somerset Island. To the west are the many small islands (including Little Cornwallis Island) of the Queens Channel and McDougall Sound that separate Cornwallis Island from Bathurst Island.
Cornwallis Island has an area of 6,995 km², with a maximum length and width of 115 km and 90 km, respectively. Much of island presents a bleak, post-glacial, landscape of low-lying plains littered with permafrost-consolidated and loose glacial material. The southeastern sections of the island (snow-covered in the above image) contain the most elevated terrain on the island, with hills rising to a height of 343 m above sea level.
The southeastern region meets the coast in some of the islands most dramatic scenery, where the uplands fall to the coast via the 200 m high Cape Hotham Escarpment that runs along the southeastern coast for 60 km from Cape Hotham in the south to Snowblind Bay in the north. Parts of the escarpment and its adjacent hinterland are deeply eroded by rivers draining from the interior — such as those that emerge at Barlow Inlet (visible in the image as a network of branching valleys marked by shadow on the southeastern corner) and at Depot Point.
image: MODIS rapid response project at nasa/goddard space flight center
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