Bennett Island (; ) is the largest of the De Long Islands in the northern part of the East Siberian Sea in North Asia. The area of this island is approximately and it has a tombolo at its eastern end. The highest point of the island is high Mount De Long, the highest point of the archipelago. Bennett Island is part of the Yakutia administrative division of Russia.
History Bennett Island was discovered by the wider world by US explorer George W. De Long in 1881, and named after the American publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr., who had financed the expedition. De Long set out in 1879 aboard the , hoping to reach Wrangel Island and to discover open seas in the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole. When the ship entered an ice pack near Herald Island in September 1879 it became trapped. The vessel was crushed by the ice and sank in June 1881. At that point the party was forced to trek over the ice on foot, discovering Bennett Island during July 1881, and claiming it for the United States. They remained on the island for several days before setting out again for the New Siberian Islands and the mainland of Siberia.Naval Historical Center, 2003a, A Lengthy Deployment: The Jeannette Expedition in Arctic Waters as Described in Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Navy, 1880–1884 Last visited May 26, 2008.Naval Historical Center, 2003b, Jeannette Arctic Expedition, 1879–1881 – Overview and Selected Images. Last visited May 26, 2008.
In August 1901, Russian polar ship Zarya sailed on an expedition searching for the legendary Sannikov Land but was soon blocked by floating pack ice. During 1902 the attempts to reach Sannikov Land continued while Zarya was trapped in fast ice. Russian explorer Baron Eduard Toll and three companions vanished forever in November 1902 while travelling away from Bennett Island towards the south on loose ice floes.Barr, W., 1980, Baron Eduard von Toll's Last Expedition: The Russian Polar Expedition, 1900–1903. Arctic. vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 201–224.
In 1916, the Russian ambassador in London issued an official notice to the effect that the Imperial government considered Bennett, along with other Arctic islands, integral parts of the Russian Empire. This territorial claim was later maintained by the Soviet Union.
Some individuals assert American ownership of Bennett Island, and others of the De Long group, based on the 1881 landing. However, the United States government has never claimed Bennett Island, and recognizes it as Russian territory.Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, US State Department, 2003, Status of Wrangel and other Arctic islands Last visited May 26, 2008.
Geology
Bennett Island consists of Early Paleozoic, late Cretaceous, Pliocene, and Quaternary sedimentary and igneous rocks. The oldest rocks outcropping on Bennett island are moderately tilted marine Cambrian to Ordovician sedimentary rocks. They consist of an approximately thick sequence of argillites with minor amounts of siltstone, and limestone that contain Middle Cambrian trilobites and of Ordovician argillites, siltstones, and quartz sandstones that contain graptolites. These Paleozoic rocks are overlain by Late Cretacecous coal-bearing argillites and quartzite-like sandstones and basaltic lava and tuff with lenses of tuffaceous argillite. The Late Cretaceous strata is overlain by basaltic lavas ranging in age from Pliocene to Quaternary. The Quaternary volcanic rocks form volcanic cones.Kos’ko, M.K., B.G. Lopatin, and V.G. Ganelin, 1990, Major geological features of the islands of the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas and the Northern Coast of Chukotka. Marine Geology. 93, pp. 349–367Kos' ko, M.K. and Trufanov, G.V., 2002. Middle Cretaceous to Eopleistocene sequences on the New Siberian Islands: an approach to interpret offshore seismic. Marine and Petroleum Geology, 19(7), pp. 901–919.Kos'ko, M. and Korago, E., 2009. Review of geology of the new Siberian islands between the Laptev and the East Siberian Seas, North East Russia. Stephan Mueller Special Publication Series, 4, pp. 45–64.
Climate Little has been published about the climatology of Bennett Island in the English language literature. Dr. GlazovskiyGlazovskiy, A.F., 1996, Russian Arctic. in J. Jania and J.O. Hagen, eds. Mass Balance of Arctic Glaciers. International Arctic Science Committee (Working Group on Arctic Glaciology) Report No. 5, Faculty of Earth Sciences University of Silesia, Sosnowiec-Oslo, Norway. 62 pp. stated that the annual precipitation on Bennett Island varied from at sea level to at the crest of the Tollya Ice Cap.
Glaciers
Bennett Island has the largest permanent ice cover within the De Long Islands. In 1987, the permanent ice cap of this island consisted of four separate glaciers that had a total area of . All of these glaciers were perched on high, basaltic plateaus bounded by steep scarp-like slopes.Verkulich, S.R., A.G. Krusanov, and M.A. Anisimov, 1992, The present state of, and trends displayed by, the glaciers of Bennett Island in the past 40 years. Polar Geography and Geology. vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 51–57.
In 1992, Dr. Verkulich and others named these glaciers as the De Long East, De Long West, Malyy, and Toll glaciers. With an area of in 1987, Toll Glacier was the largest of them. It occupied the center of Bennett Island; had an elevation of above mean sea level; and was thick at its center. It had an outlet glacier, West Seeberg Glacier, from which ice flowed downhill from Toll Glacier into the sea. The next largest glacier was De Long East Glacier with an area of in 1987. It laid about above mean sea level at the southeast end of Bennett Island and had a thickness of . Adjacent to De Long East Glacier laid the De Long West Glacier with an area of ; an elevation of above mean sea level; and a thickness of in 1987. Malyy Glacier, with an area of in 1987, occupied a basaltic plateau at an elevation of above mean sea level on the northeast end of Bennett Island and was thick. In 1987, all of these glaciers were shrinking in volume and had been so for the past 40 years.
Of the glaciers described by Dr. Verkulich and others, Dr. Glazovskiy discusses only the Toll Ice Cap, which Dr. Verkulich and others referred to as "Toll Glacier". In 1996, it had an area of and a mean elevation of above sea level. Its equilibrium line altitude was at an elevation of 200 m (660 ft) above sea level.
According to Alekseev,Alekseev, M.N., 1997, Paleogeography and geochronology in the Russian eastern Arctic during the second half of the Quaternary. Quaternary International. vol. 41–42, pp. 11–15. Anisimov and Tumskoy,Anisimov, M.A., and V.E. Tumskoy, 2002, Environmental History of the Novosibirskie Islands for the last 12 ka. 32nd International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2002. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, pp 23–25. and Makeyev and others,Makeyev, V.M., V.V. Pitul’ko, and A.K. Kasparov, 1992, The natural environment of the De Long Archipelago and ancient man in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Polar Geography and Geology. vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 55–63. the glaciers found on Bennett and other islands of the De Long Islands are remnants of small passive ice caps formed during the Last Glacial Maximum (Late Weichselian Epoch) about 17,000 to 24,000 BP. At the time that these ice caps formed, the De Long Islands were major hills within a large subaerial plain, called the Great Arctic Plain, that now lies submerged below the Arctic Ocean and East Siberian Sea.Schirrmeister, L., H.-W. Hubberten, V. Rachold, and V.G. Grosse, 2005, Lost world – Late Quaternary environment of periglacial Arctic shelves and coastal lowlands in NE-Siberia. 2nd International Alfred Wegener Symposium Bremerhaven, October 30 – November 2, 2005.
Vegetation Rush/grass, forb, and cryptogam tundra covers the Bennett Island. It is tundra consisting mostly of very low-growing grasses, rushes, forbs, mosses, lichens, and liverworts. These plants either mostly or completely cover the surface of the ground. The soils are typically moist, fine-grained, and often hummocky.CAVM Team, 2003, Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map. . Scale 1:7,500,000. Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) Map No. 1. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska.
Atmospheric plumes and hydrothermal eruptions
Bennett Island is notable for its associated atmospheric plumes, which have remained a mystery to atmospheric scientists for decades. From time to time, large plumes form over this island, reaching hundreds of miles in length and radiating from the northeast coast of Russia. According to recent studies, hydrothermal eruptions in the vicinity of the island are the cause of their formation, but this does not exclude other mechanisms of their origin, including meteorological ones.
History and versions Atmospheric plumes of Bennett Island were discovered on February 18, 1983, when an image of one of them was received by the NOAA-6 satellite. On July 25, 1984, during ice reconnaissance north of the New Siberian Islands, Bennett Island was explored by a Soviet expedition. Nothing was found that would be indicative of a recent volcanic eruption. There were no visible changes on the island, including among the representatives of the local fauna. Since then, the main hypotheses for the formation of plumes have been the assumption that they are caused by volcanoes, outbursts of some gas, military tests, as well as the assumption of their meteorological origin.
Today, the version of periodic hydrothermal eruptions near the island is considered the most reliable. As of 2023, there is no documentary evidence from the surface that closely demonstrates this event. Existing medium-resolution satellite images are more likely to indicate several simultaneous surface eruptions or strong heating of a large area of the sea near the island and are not very similar to the image of a single powerful source of a steam-gas plume. In the event of any major geothermal eruption in an ice-covered sea, it is also natural to expect a polynya to form after it ends. In 2023, there are no satellite photos confirming its formation. Thus, for all its validity, the hypothesis of periodic hydrothermal eruptions still lacks observational evidence.
The most popular theory among scientists was that the plumes were formed when clathrates—methane, trapped and frozen into a crystalline structure similar to ice by a combination of low temperatures and high pressures—melted and released methane gas. These gas deposits can melt, bubble to the surface and erupt like a geyser into the atmosphere.
Due to remaining cold-war tensions, and the Soviet military's desire to protect the secrecy of submarine facilities, western scientists were only able to observe the plumes remotely via satellite. The melting permafrost/clathrate hypothesis was unable to be tested until spring of 1992, when US and Russian Scientists in Siberia were able to conduct an air-borne expedition conduct a sampling of the plume and surprisingly found no methane.
Scientists had initially dismissed the meteorological explanation of the clouds because the plumes only seemed to be unique to Bennett Island and not the other, similar islands, and because it was thought that the 1,000 foot high island was too low to generate orographic clouds. Orographic clouds normally form when air is forced to rise as it passes over a mountain and cools.