The Geography of Franz Josef Land refers to an island group belonging to Arkhangelsk Oblast of Russia. It is situated in the Barents Sea of the Arctic, north of Novaya Zemlya and east of Svalbard. At latitudes between 80.0° and 81.9° north, it is the most northerly group of islands associated with Eurasia. The extreme northernmost point is Cape Fligely on Rudolf Island. The archipelago consists of 191 ice-covered islands with a total area of 16,134 km2 (6,229 sq mi). It is currently uninhabited. The archipelago is only 900 to 1,110 km (560 to 690 miles) from the North Pole, and the northernmost islands are closer to the Pole than any other land except for Canada's Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The largest island is Zemlya Georga (George Land) which measures 110 km (68 mi) from end to end. The highest point in the archipelago is on Ostrov Viner-Neyshtadt (Wiener Neustadt Island) which reaches 620 m (2,034 ft) above sea level. The central cluster of large islands in the midst of the archipelago forms a compact whole, known as Zichy Land, where islands are separated from each other by very narrow sounds that are frozen most of the year. During the period 1926 and 1932 Franz Josef Land also known in Russian as Zemlya Franca Josepha became a part of the Soviet Union and is included under the Arkhangelsk Oblast. In 1994, it was declared the Sakasnik Nature Reserve covering an area of 42,000 square kilometres (16,000 sq mi) including area of the sea surrounding the land but with restricted entry only on special permit which is not given easily; out of this area, 50 square kilometres (19 sq mi) area around the military base of Nagurskoye on the Alexandra Land is totally out of bounds.
Landforms
The archipelago is located at the nearest about 900 kilometres (560 mi) from the North Pole, far beyond the Polar Circle. The group's 191 islands measure 16,135 square kilometres (6,230 sq mi). They extend over a length of 234 kilometres (145 mi) in the north–south direction and 350 kilometres (220 mi) in the east–west direction. There are flat mountains in the range of 400–490 metres (1,310–1,610 ft) above sea level. The general lie of the land is in the elevation range between 300 metres (980 ft) in the north and 600 metres (2,000 ft) in the south with Wilczek Land forming the highest land mass at an elevation of 670 metres (2,200 ft). The islands are covered with glaciers to the extent of 85%, with no land breaks, and the land area of all the islands is only about 20%, with a coastline measuring 4,425 kilometres (2,750 mi). There are multiple icebergs, with limited length of less than 400 metres (1,300 ft) and some of them are similar to the Antarctic tabular iceberg. Air borne radar measurements have recorded an ice layer of 400 metres (1,300 ft) in Graham Bell and Hall Islands; the thick ice cover on the islands is a phenomenon of the last 1000 years. As a result the reindeer population has not survived in these islands. Moving down to the coastal region, where the ice disappears, many lakes and ponds are seen. But as this area is very limited only small streams are noted, the largest extendigng only 19 kilometres (12 mi) in length on Prince George Island.
Islands
Franz Josef Land comprises some 191 more or less ice-covered islands with a total area of about 16,134 km2 (6,229 sq mi); the area varying with the fluctuation of glaciers during rising or receding stages. Its two largest islands are Prince George Island and Wilczek Land, the former lies to the west and the latter to the east in the archipelago. Two geographic subgroups in Franz Joseph Land are Zemlya Zichy (Zichy Land), a large and compact glaciarized island cluster located in the middle of the archipelago containing ten large islands, and Belaya Zemlya, a group of three islands in the northeast named Hvidtenland ("White Land") by Fridtjof Nansen. Through the middle of these two groups runs the wide strait which von Payer named the Austrian Strait, in honour of his country. Rudolph Island is the nearest to the North Pole. The largest island, Zemlya Georga (George Land) measures 110 km (68 mi) from end to end. The highest point in the archipelago is on Ostrov Viner-Neyshtadt (Wiener Neustadt Island) which reaches 620 m (2,034 ft) above sea level. The archipelago is divided in at least three subgroups:
Western islands, west of the British Channel and De Bruyne Sound; Eastern islands, east of the Northeastern Sound, Beryozkina Channel and Austrian Strait; Central islands, everything in between these two. The central islands again split in the minor groups:
Northern islands, north of the Markham Sound; Southern islands, south of the Markham Sound.
Largest islands
Western islands
The western islands are separated from the other islands by the British Channel and De Bruyne Sound to the east. They include the large Alexandra Land and Prince George Land and the smaller Arthur, Bruce Island, Mabel, Bell, and Northbrook islands.
Alexandra Land Alexandra Land is the westernmost island in the archipelago. It has an area of approximately 1,051 square kilometers (406 sq mi). The sounds Cambridge Sound to the east and Arkhangelsky Sound off the northeast coast separate it from Zemlya Georga (also known as Prince George Land) to the east. Its highest point is 382 metres (1,253 ft) in the centre of the island, and there is also a 31 metres (102 ft) peak near the northern coast. Cape Nimrod lies on its western coast, and Cape George Thomas on its northeastern coast on Arkhangelsky Sound. There is a base named Nagurskoye near its northern coast, named after Jan Nagórski, which served as one of the most important meteorological stations in the archipelago during the Cold War. The northernmost Russian Air Force base is in the Alexandra Island (though in a poor condition) with a small unit of security force is existing since 1955. Prior to this, the manned base station in the extreme north was in the Rudolph island which is defunct since 1955. It has a 1,500 meters (4,921 ft) snow runway. An Antonov An-72 cargo aircraft crashed while landing at Nagurskoye on 23 December 1996.
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