Floating island

Floating island

A floating island is a mass of floating aquatic plants, mud, and peat ranging in thickness from a few inches to several feet. Floating islands are a common natural phenomenon that are found in many parts of the world. They exist less commonly as a man-made phenomenon. Floating islands are generally found on marshlands, lakes, and similar wetland locations, and can be many hectares in size.

Natural floating islands

When they occur naturally they are sometimes referred to as "tussocks", "floatons", or "sudds". Natural floating islands are composed of vegetation growing on a buoyant mat consisting of plant roots or other organic detritus.

They typically occur when growths of cattails, bulrush, sedge, and reeds extend outward from the shoreline of a wetland area. As the water gets deeper the roots no longer reach the bottom, so they use the oxygen in their root mass for buoyancy, and the surrounding vegetation for support to retain their top-side-up orientationFact|date=June 2007. The area beneath these floating mats is exceptionally rich in aquatic lifeforms. Eventually, storm events tear whole sections free from the shore, and the islands thus formed migrate around a lake with changing winds, eventually either reattaching to a new area of the shore, or breaking up in heavy weather.

Natural floating islands may have been the source of many "disappearing island" legends, such as those surrounding the Isle of Avalon.

Artificial floating islands

Floating artificial islands are generally made of bundled reeds, and the best known examples are those of the Uros people of Lake Titicaca, Peru, who build their villages upon what are in effect huge rafts of bundled totora reeds. The Uros originally created their islands to prevent attacks by their more aggressive neighbours, the Incas and Collas. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was surrounded with "chinampas", small artificial islands used for agriculture known as "floating gardens" (though not really floating). Spiral Island was a more modern one-person effort of constructing an artificial floating island in Mexico.

The British wartime Project Habakkuk proposed the construction of aircraft carriers made of ice-like Pykrete. Its size and speed made it more an artificial iceberg or island than a ship.

Commercial development of floating islands has begun taking place. A commercially-produced floating island was installed in the river otter enclosure at Zoo Montana in 2007. [http://floatingislandinternational.com/pdf/Zoo-otters.pdf]

External links

* [http://alexuk.com/travel/inca/index_13.htm Inca Heartland] - A site with numerous pictures of floating artificial islands on Lake Titicaca.
* [http://monolith.com.au/travel/peru.html Tourism Keeping Peruvian Islands Afloat] article by Roderick Eime
* [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/06/MNGLTFJQQ71.DTL&feed=rss.news "Disagreement on whether to tether island that floats free in Massachusetts pond"] - "San Francisco Chronicle"


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • Floating island — Floating Float ing, a. 1. Buoyed upon or in a fluid; a, the floating timbers of a wreck; floating motes in the air. [1913 Webster] 2. Free or lose from the usual attachment; as, the floating ribs in man and some other animals. [1913 Webster] 3.… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • floating island — n. ☆ 1. a floating mass of vegetation resembling an island 2. a dessert of boiled custard topped with a dab or dabs of meringue or whipped cream …   English World dictionary

  • floating island — /floʊtɪŋ ˈaɪlənd/ (say flohting uyluhnd) noun 1. a floating island like mass of earth and partly decayed vegetation held together by interlacing roots, sometimes built artificially on wooden platforms as in Asia, or resulting naturally from the… …  

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  • Floating island (fiction) — A floating island in fiction (sometimes called a flying island), is a fictitious landmass that either floats in a body of water (like Vadanis in The Guardian Cycle of novels) or flies above the surface of the earth (or in some cases through the… …   Wikipedia

  • floating island — dessert made of custard with floating quantities of beaten egg whites; floating piece of land similar to an island …   English contemporary dictionary

  • floating island — noun 1. a. : floating garden b. : a floating mass of vegetation with little or no soil (as in a lake or quiet tropical sea) usually due to detachment of matted vegetation from a marshy shore 2. : a dessert consisting of custard with floating… …   Useful english dictionary

  • floating island — noun A French cold dessert consisting of an island of meringue, made of egg whites and sugar, floating in a sea of custard …   Wiktionary

  • floating island — 1. a dessert consisting of boiled custard with portions of meringue, whipped cream, or whipped egg whites and sometimes jelly floating upon it or around it. 2. a floating mass of earth and partly decayed vegetation held together by interlacing… …   Universalium

  • floating island — noun Date: 1771 a dessert consisting of custard with floating masses of beaten egg whites …   New Collegiate Dictionary

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