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46-531: The volcanic group lies on the Kurile arc of the Pacific ring of fire , and consists of andesite , basalt , and dacite stratovolcanoes and lava domes . The group gets its name from the highest peak in the group, Mount Tokachi. The most recent activity is centered on the northwest end. The following table lists the mountains in the volcanic group. Other peaks include: This Hokkaidō location article

92-737: A feudal lord of Japan, became independent from the Ando clan (the family of Goro Ando). The Japanese administration first took nominal control of the islands during the Edo period (1603-1868) in the form of claims by the Matsumae clan . The Shōhō Era Map of Japan ( Shōhō kuni ezu ( 正保国絵図 ) ), a map of Japan made by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1644, shows 39 large and small islands northeast of Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula and Cape Nosappu . A Dutch expedition under Maarten Gerritsz Vries explored

138-531: A landscape. Only the southernmost island has large areas covered by trees, while more northerly islands have no trees, or spotty tree cover. The northernmost, Atlasov Island (Oyakoba in Japanese), is an almost-perfect volcanic cone rising sheer out of the sea; it has been praised by the Japanese in haiku , wood-block prints , and other forms, in much the same way as the better-known Mount Fuji . Its summit

184-684: A popular domestic cat. Among terrestrial birds, ravens , peregrine falcons , some wrens and wagtails are common. The Ainu people inhabited the Kuril Islands from early times, although few records predate the 17th century. From the Kamakura period to the Muromachi period , there were Ezo (Ainu) people called Hinomoto from the Pacific coast of Hokkaido to the Kuril region, and Mr. Ando,

230-407: A principal component of the diet of many of the smaller marine mammals and birds along the chain. Fish : Further offshore, walleye pollock , Pacific cod , several species of flatfish are of the greatest commercial importance. During the 1980s, migratory Japanese sardine was one of the most abundant fish in the summer. Pinniped : The main pinnipeds were a significant object of harvest for

276-438: A rise in the demand of electricity, the local government is also upgrading a state-run geothermal power plant at Mount Baransky , an active volcano, where steam and hot water can be found. In 2022, a special economic zone was established on the Kuril islands with special tax regimes, exemption from corporate income tax, VAT with reduced customs duties for 20 years. It is an important part of Russian government's plan to develop

322-741: A volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East . The islands stretch approximately 1,300 km (810 mi) northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean . There are 56 islands and many minor islets. The Kuril Islands consist of the Greater Kuril Chain and, at

368-893: Is a divergent boundary with the Antarctic plate forming the Pacific–Antarctic Ridge . The western side is bounded by the Okhotsk microplate at the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench and the Japan Trench . The plate forms a convergent boundary by subducting under the Philippine Sea plate creating the Mariana Trench , has a transform boundary with the Caroline plate , and has a collision boundary with

414-430: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Kurile Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands ( / ˈ k ( j ) ʊər ɪ l , k j ʊ ˈ r iː l / ; Russian : Кури́льские острова́ , romanized : Kuril'skiye ostrova , IPA: [kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva] ; Japanese : Kuriru rettō ( クリル列島 , "Kuril Islands") or Chishima rettō ( 千島列島 , "Thousand Islands") ) are

460-552: Is occupied by a nesting bird. Several of the islands, including Kunashir and the Lesser Kuril Chain in the South Kurils, and the northern Kurils from Urup to Paramushir, have been recognised as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) by BirdLife International because they support populations of various threatened bird species, including many waterbirds , seabirds and waders . The composition of terrestrial species on

506-564: Is taken up by rodents , many introduced in historical times. The largest southernmost and northernmost islands are inhabited by brown bear , foxes, and martens . Leopards once inhabited the islands. Some species of deer are found on the more southerly islands. It is claimed that a wild cat, the Kurilian Bobtail , originates from the Kuril Islands. The bobtail is due to the mutation of a dominant gene. The cat has been domesticated and exported to nearby Russia and bred there, becoming

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552-694: Is the highest point in Sakhalin Oblast . Owing to their location along the Pacific shelf edge and the confluence of Okhotsk Sea gyre and the southward Oyashio Current , the Kuril islands are surrounded by waters that are among the most productive in the North Pacific, supporting a wide range and high abundance of marine life. Invertebrates : Extensive kelp beds surrounding almost every island provide crucial habitat for sea urchins , various mollusks and countless other invertebrates and their associated predators. Many species of squid provide

598-477: Is the primary occupation. The islands have strategic and economic value, in terms of fisheries and also mineral deposits of pyrite , sulfur , and various polymetallic ores . There are hopes that oil exploration will provide an economic boost to the islands. In 2014, construction workers built a pier and a breakwater in Kitovy Bay, central Iturup, where barges are a major means of transport, sailing between

644-574: The Aleutian Trench and the corresponding Aleutian Islands (see also: Aleutian Arc ). The Pacific plate is almost entirely oceanic crust , but it contains some continental crust in New Zealand, Baja California , and coastal California . The Pacific plate has the distinction of showing one of the largest areal sections of the oldest members of seabed geology being entrenched into eastern Asian oceanic trenches . A geologic map of

690-1701: The Habomai rocks, together called the Northern Territories . In addition, the Japanese government claims that the Kuril Islands, other than the Northern Territories and South Karafuto, are undetermined areas under international law because the San Francisco Peace Treaty does not specify where they belong and the Soviet Union has not signed it. On 8 February 2017 the Russian government gave names to five previously unnamed Kuril islands in Sakhalin Oblast : Derevyanko Island (after Kuzma Derevyanko , 43°22′8″N 146°1′3″E  /  43.36889°N 146.01750°E  / 43.36889; 146.01750 ), Gnechko Island (after Alexey Gnechko , 43°48′5″N 146°52′1″E  /  43.80139°N 146.86694°E  / 43.80139; 146.86694 ), Gromyko Island (after Andrei Gromyko , 46°14′1″N 150°36′1″E  /  46.23361°N 150.60028°E  / 46.23361; 150.60028 ), Farkhutdinov Island (after Igor Farkhutdinov , 43°48′5″N 146°53′2″E  /  43.80139°N 146.88389°E  / 43.80139; 146.88389 ) and Shchetinina Island (after Anna Shchetinina , 46°13′7″N 150°34′6″E  /  46.21861°N 150.56833°E  / 46.21861; 150.56833 ). As of 2013 , 19,400 people inhabited

736-948: The Juan de Fuca plate and the Gorda plate forming respectively the Explorer Ridge , the Juan de Fuca Ridge and the Gorda Ridge . In the middle of the eastern side is a transform boundary with the North American plate along the San Andreas Fault , and a boundary with the Cocos plate . The south-eastern side is a divergent boundary with the Nazca plate forming the East Pacific Rise . The southern side

782-541: The Kamchatka-Kurile meadows and sparse forests , a larger ecoregion that extends onto the Kamchatka Peninsula and Commander Islands . Because of the generally smaller size and isolation of the central islands, few major terrestrial mammals have colonized these, though red and Arctic foxes were introduced for the sake of the fur trade in the 1880s. The bulk of the terrestrial mammal biomass

828-548: The Kuril islands in return for entering the Pacific War against the Japanese during World War II. In August 1945 the Soviet Union mounted an armed invasion of South Sakhalin at the cost of over 5,000 Soviet and Japanese lives. The Kuril Islands are split into three administrative districts ( raions ), each a part of Sakhalin Oblast : Japan maintains a claim to the three islands of Kunashir , Iturup , and Shikotan , and

874-718: The North Bismarck plate . In the south-west, the Pacific plate has a complex but generally convergent boundary with the Indo-Australian plate , subducting under it north of New Zealand forming the Tonga Trench and the Kermadec Trench . The Alpine Fault marks a transform boundary between the two plates, and further south the Indo-Australian plate subducts under the Pacific plate forming

920-520: The Puysegur Trench . The southern part of Zealandia , which is to the east of this boundary, is the plate's largest block of continental crust. Hillis and Müller are reported to consider the Bird's Head plate to be moving in unison with the Pacific plate, but Bird considers them to be unconnected. The northern side is a convergent boundary subducting under the North American plate forming

966-812: The Russian far east . The main Russian force stationed on the islands is the 18th Machine Gun Artillery Division , which has its headquarters in Goryachiye Klyuchi on the Iturup Island. There are also Border Guard Service troops stationed on the islands. In February 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for substantial reinforcements of the Kuril Islands defences. Subsequently, in 2015, additional anti-aircraft missile systems Tor and Buk , coastal defence missile system Bastion , Kamov Ka-52 combat helicopters and one Varshavyanka project submarine came on defence of Kuril Islands. During

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1012-476: The subpolar oceanic climate of southwest Alaska much more than the hypercontinental climate of Manchuria and interior Siberia, as precipitation is heavy and permafrost completely absent. It is characterized by mild summers with only 1 to 3 months above 10 °C or 50 °F and cold, snowy, extremely windy winters below −3 °C or 26.6 °F, although usually above −10 °C or 14 °F. The chain ranges from temperate to sub-Arctic climate types, and

1058-474: The triple junction of the three main oceanic plates of Panthalassa , the Farallon , Phoenix , and Izanagi plates , around 190 million years ago. The plate formed because the triple junction had converted to an unstable form surrounded on all sides by transform faults , due to the development of a kink in one of the plate boundaries. The "Pacific Triangle", the oldest part of the Pacific plate, created during

1104-478: The true seals and Steller sea lions has been relatively insignificant on the Kuril islands proper. Since the 1960s there has been essentially no additional harvest and the pinniped populations in the Kuril islands appear to be fairly healthy and in some cases expanding. The notable exception is the now extinct Japanese sea lion , which was known to occasionally haul out on the Kuril islands. Sea otters : Sea otters were exploited very heavily for their pelts in

1150-449: The 19th century, as shown by 19th- and 20th-century whaling catch and sighting records. Seabirds : The Kuril islands are home to many millions of seabirds, including northern fulmars , tufted puffins , murres , kittiwakes , guillemots , auklets , petrels , gulls and cormorants . On many of the smaller islands in summer, where terrestrial predators are absent, virtually every possibly hummock, cliff niche or underneath of boulder

1196-661: The 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine it was reported that parts of the 18th Machine Gun Artillery Division were redeployed to Eastern Ukraine. While in Russian sources the islands are mentioned for the first time in 1646, the earliest detailed information about them was provided by the explorer Vladimir Atlasov in 1697. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Kuril Islands were explored by Danila Antsiferov , I. Kozyrevsky, Ivan Yevreinov , Fyodor Luzhin , Martin Spanberg , Adam Johann von Krusenstern , Vasily Golovnin , and Henry James Snow. The following table lists information on

1242-769: The Ezo Sateshiku and Ezo Kanrei, was in charge of this ("Suwa Daimyojin Ekotoba"). It is said that when turmoil broke out on Ezogashima, he dispatched troops from Tsugaru. Its activities include the Kanto Gomensen, which calls itself the Ando Suigun, and is based in Jusanminato ("Kaisen Shikimoku"), supplying Japanese products to Ezo society and purchasing large quantities of northern products and shipping them nationwide. ("Thirteen Streets").The Matsumae clan,

1288-640: The Kuril Islands are known as the Chishima Islands ( Kanji : 千島列島 Chishima Rettō pronounced [tɕiɕima ɾeꜜttoː] , literally, 'Thousand Islands Archipelago'), also known as the Kuriru Islands ( Katakana : クリル列島 Kuriru Rettō [kɯɾiɾɯ ɾeꜜttoː] , literally, Kuril Archipelago ). Once the Russians reached the islands in the 18th century they found a pseudo-etymology from Russian kurit′ , курить 'to smoke' due to

1334-410: The Kuril Islands, of which 16,700 lived on the four disputed southern islands and 2,600 lived on Paramushir , the northernmost large island; the islands in between are uninhabited. These include ethnic Russians , Ukrainians , Belarusians , Tatars , Nivkhs , Oroch , Japanese and Ainus . Iturup Island is over 60% ethnically Ukrainian. Russian Orthodox Christianity is the main religion. Some of

1380-620: The Kuril islands is dominated by Asian mainland taxa via migration from Hokkaido and Sakhalin Islands and by Kamchatkan taxa from the North. While highly diverse, there is a relatively low level of endemism on a species level. The WWF divides the Kuril Islands into two ecoregions . The southern Kurils, along with southwestern Sakhalin, comprise the South Sakhalin-Kurile mixed forests ecoregion. The northern islands are part of

1426-559: The Kuril islands. The Ainu were required to adopt Japanese names, and ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing. Although not compulsory, education was conducted in Japanese. Prior to Japanese colonization (in 1868) about 100 Ainu reportedly lived on the Kuril islands. In February 1945 the Yalta Agreement promised to the Soviet Union South Sakhalin and

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1472-867: The Pacific Ocean basin. This reduced the Farallon plate to a few remnants along the west coast of the Americas and the Phoenix plate to a small remnant near the Drake Passage , and destroyed the Izanagi plate by subduction under Asia. The Pacific plate contains an interior hot spot forming the Hawaiian Islands . The north-eastern side is a divergent boundary with the Explorer plate ,

1518-474: The Pacific Ocean seabed shows not only the geologic sequences, and associated Ring of Fire zones on the ocean's perimeters, but the various ages of the seafloor in a stairstep fashion, youngest to oldest, the oldest being consumed into the Asian oceanic trenches. The oldest part disappearing by way of the plate tectonics cycle is early- Cretaceous (145 to 137 million years ago). The Pacific plate originated at

1564-491: The bark Cape Horn Pigeon , of New Bedford and escorted it to Vladivostok , where it was detained for nearly two weeks. At the very end of the 19th century, the Japanese administration started the forced assimilation of the native Ainu people. Also at this time the Ainu were granted automatic Japanese citizenship, effectively denying them the status of an indigenous group. Many Japanese moved onto former Ainu lands, including

1610-651: The continual fumes and steam above the islands from volcanoes. The Kuril Islands form part of the ring of tectonic instability encircling the Pacific Ocean referred to as the Ring of Fire . The islands themselves are summits of stratovolcanoes that are a direct result of the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk Plate , which forms the Kuril Trench some 200 kilometres (124 mi) east of

1656-475: The cove and ships anchored offshore. A new road has been carved through the woods near Kurilsk, the island's biggest village, going to the site of Yuzhno-Kurilsk Mendeleyevo Airport . Gidrostroy, the Kurils' biggest business group with interests in fishing, construction and real estate, built its second fish processing factory on Iturup island in 2006, introducing a state-of-the-art conveyor system. To deal with

1702-472: The indigenous populations of the Kuril islands, both for food and materials such as skin and bone. The long-term fluctuations in the range and distribution of human settlements along the Kuril island presumably tracked the pinniped ranges. In historical times, fur seals were heavily exploited for their fur in the 19th and early 20th centuries and several of the largest reproductive rookeries, as on Raykoke island, were extirpated. In contrast, commercial harvest of

1748-410: The islands in 1643. Fedot Alekseyevich Popov sailing into the area c.  1649 . Russian Cossacks landed on Shumshu in 1711. American whaleships caught right whales off the islands between 1847 and 1892. Three of the ships were wrecked on the islands: two on Urup in 1855 and one on Makanrushi in 1856. In September 1892, north of Kunashir Island , a Russian schooner seized

1794-466: The islands include many kinds of beach and rocky shores, cliffs, wide rivers and fast gravelly streams, forests, grasslands, alpine tundra , crater lakes and peat bogs . The soils are generally productive, owing to the periodic influxes of volcanic ash and, in certain places, owing to significant enrichment by seabird guano . However, many of the steep, unconsolidated slopes are susceptible to landslides and newer volcanic activity can entirely denude

1840-403: The islands is generally severe, with long, cold, stormy winters and short and notoriously foggy summers. The average annual precipitation is 40 to 50 inches (1,020 to 1,270 mm), a large portion of which falls as snow. The Köppen climate classification of most of the Kurils is subarctic ( Dfc ), although Kunashir is humid continental ( Dfb ). However, the Kuril Islands' climate resembles

1886-649: The islands. The chain has around 100 volcanoes, some 40 of which are active, and many hot springs and fumaroles . There is frequent seismic activity , including a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in 1963 and one of magnitude 8.3 recorded on November 15, 2006 , which resulted in tsunami waves up to 1.5 metres (5 ft) reaching the California coast. Raikoke Island, near the centre of the archipelago, has an active volcano which erupted again in June 2019, with emissions reaching 13,000 m (42,651 ft). The climate on

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1932-536: The main islands from north to south: Pacific Plate The Pacific plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean . At 103 million km (40 million sq mi), it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence as a microplate 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon , Phoenix , and Izanagi plates . The Pacific plate subsequently grew to where it underlies most of

1978-529: The southwest end, the parallel Lesser Kuril Chain . They cover an area of around 10,503.2 square kilometres (4,055.3 sq mi), with a population of roughly 20,000. The islands have been under Russian administration since their 1945 invasion by the Soviet Union near the end of World War II . Japan claims the four southernmost islands, including two of the three largest ( Iturup and Kunashir ), as part of its territory, as well as Shikotan and

2024-598: The unpopulated Habomai islets, which has led to the ongoing Kuril Islands dispute . The disputed islands are known in Japan as the country's "Northern Territories". The name Kuril originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu , the islands' original inhabitants : kur , meaning 'man'. It may also be related to names for other islands that have traditionally been inhabited by the Ainu people , such as Kuyi or Kuye for Sakhalin and Kai for Hokkaidō . In Japanese ,

2070-418: The vegetative cover consequently ranges from tundra in the north to dense spruce and larch forests on the larger southern islands. The highest elevations on the islands are Alaid volcano (highest point: 2,339 m or 7,674 ft) on Atlasov Island at the northern end of the chain and Tyatya volcano (1,819 m or 5,968 ft) on Kunashir Island at the southern end. Landscape types and habitats on

2116-416: The villages are permanently occupied by Russian soldiers. Others are inhabited by civilians, who are mostly fishers, workers in fish factories, dockers, and social sphere workers (police, medics, teachers, etc.). Construction works on the islands have attracted migrant workers from the rest of Russia and other post-Soviet states . As of 2014 , there were only 8 inhabited islands out of a total of 56. Fishing

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