Recursive islands and lakes
Wikipedia list of recursive islands and lakes

A recursive island or lake, also known as a nested island or lake, is an island that lies inside a lake, or vice versa.
For the purposes of defining recursion, small continental land masses such as Madagascar and New Zealand count as islands, while large continental land masses such as Australia do not. Islands found within lakes in these countries are often recursive islands because the lake itself is located on an island. The recursion is sometimes expressed as the order of the island, so the many islands of the earth's global ocean are zero order islands.
Recursive islands
Islands in lakes
Islands in lakes on islands
These are first order islands.
There are nearly 1,000 islands in lakes on islands in Finland alone.
Islands in lakes on islands in lakes
These are second order islands.
Islands in lakes on islands in lakes on islands
These are third order islands.
Islands in lakes on islands in lakes on islands in lakes
This is a fourth order island.
Recursive lakes
Lakes on islands
Lakes on islands in lakes
These are first order lakes.
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This entry incorporates text from “Recursive islands and lakes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.