science

North Seymour Island

North Seymour Island is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand North Seymour Island rather than just read about it. In short: North Seymour Island (Spanish: Isla Seymour Norte) is a small island near Baltra Island in the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. It was formed by uplift of a submarine lava formation and is now covered with low, bushy vegetation.

Key takeaways

North Seymour Island belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect North Seymour Island to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of North Seymour Island from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

North Seymour Island (Spanish: Isla Seymour Norte) is a small island near Baltra Island in the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. It was formed by uplift of a submarine lava formation and is now covered with low, bushy vegetation. It has an area of 1.9 km2 (0.73 sq mi) and a maximum elevation of 28 meters (92 ft). There is no permanent population but a visitor trail has been established approximately 2 km (1.2 mi) in length for guided tours crossing the interior of the island and exploring the rocky coast.

Name Seymour Island was named after George Francis Seymour, Commander-in-chief of the Pacific Station (1844-1847), and was given by John James Onslow, captain of HMS Daphne (1838) which spent a month in Galapagos in February-March 1845. Its present name North Seymour distinguishes it from nearby Baltra Island, also known as South Seymour. Together with Baltra, North Seymour is considered to be part of the Seymours or the Seymour Group.

Geography North Seymour is an islet near Baltra in Ecuador's Galápagos Islands. It was formed by seismic uplift of a submarine lava formation rather than directly created by volcanism. The island has a flat profile with cliffs only a few meters from the shoreline.

Flora All of North Seymour is covered with low, bushy vegetation. A tiny forest of silver-grey Palo Santo trees stand just above the landing, usually without leaves.

Wildlife North Seymour is home to a large population of blue-footed boobies and swallow-tailed gulls. Flocks of pelicans and swallow-tailed gulls feed off shore, and seasonally, Nazca boobies can also be seen. There is a slowly growing population of Galápagos land iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus). The stock for the captive breeding program of the Galápagos land iguana is descended from iguanas which Captain G. Allan Hancock moved from nearby Baltra Island in the 1930s. This helped preserve the species when Baltra became the site of an American airbase during World War II. The population swelled to over 5,000 by the 21st century, beginning to reach the limits of the island's food availability. The Directorate of the Galápagos National Park and Island Conservation took 1,436 of the iguanas from the North Seymour population to Santiago Island on 4 January 2019, restoring them to Santiago after a 180-year absence in an effort to restore that island's ecological health and to provide the both groups of iguanas more resources to thrive. Darwin had noted Santiago's iguanas in 1835, but they were last found there by Abel-Nicolas Bergasse du Petit-Thouars in 1838. On January 12, 2019, the park directorate began using aerial drones to eradicate black and brown rats (Rattus rattus and R. norvegicus) from North Seymour, the first time such an approach had been used on vertebrates in the wild. The expectation is that this innovation will pave the way for faster and cheaper eradications of invasive species in the future on small and mid-sized islands.

Gallery

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

North Seymour Information North Seymour Land Iguana History

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with North Seymour Island

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what North Seymour Island claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to North Seymour Island before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about North Seymour Island ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of North Seymour Island

In research: North Seymour Island appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses North Seymour Island in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: North Seymour Island is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Island restoration, Islands of the Galápagos Islands, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for North Seymour Island outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study North Seymour Island in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what North Seymour Island means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain North Seymour Island out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is North Seymour Island in simple terms?

Why does North Seymour Island matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study North Seymour Island?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on North Seymour Island.