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Recursive islands and lakes

Wikipedia list of recursive islands and lakes

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ25325404 ↗
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Recursive islands and lakes” as wikipedia list of recursive islands and lakes. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Recursive, islands and lakes.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 182-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Recursive, islands and lakes providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Recursive islands and lakes”, the useful work is to connect “wikipedia list of recursive islands and lakes” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25325404. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

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Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

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.