Artificial island

An artificial island is an island that has been constructed by people rather than formed by natural means. Artificial islands may vary in size from small islets reclaimed solely to support a single pillar of a building or structure to those that support entire communities and cities. Early artificial islands included floating structures in still waters or wooden or megalithic structures erected in shallow waters (e.g. crannógs and Nan Madol discussed below).

This article is about artificial islands in general. For the place in New Jersey, United States, see Artificial Island (New Jersey).
The Flevopolder in the Netherlands is 970 km2 (375 sq mi) and is the largest island formed by reclaimed land in the world

In modern times artificial islands are usually formed by land reclamation, but some are formed by the incidental isolation of an existing piece of land during canal construction (e.g. Donauinsel, Ko Kret, and much of Door County, Wisconsin), or flooding of valleys resulting in the tops of former knolls getting isolated by water (e.g., Barro Colorado Island). One of the world's largest artificial islands, René-Levasseur Island,[1][2] was formed by the flooding of two adjacent reservoirs.

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