Abstract
Landmasses can be classified as “islands” or “continents” mainly by geological, rather than geographical, criteria but the classification is still a bit arbitrary. We are presenting a statistical method (a modified Korcak analysis) where the area distribution reveals an intrinsic classification of landmasses. Based on this analysis, one can separate island, subcontinents and continents using only a spatial or geographical criterion, the area. Although not completely, this classification gives more or less the same groups like the ones based on geological criteria.
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Notes
The special Czech diacritical mark “č” in “Korčák” is usually omitted in English literature; therefore in this paper we are using “Korcak” for the method, exponent and dimension, but keeping the original way (Korčák) for the person.
Just for the sake of curiosity, these sizes are much bigger than the hypothetical island of the Greek mythology (Atlantis) fitting into the Aegean sea; the area of the biggest Aegean island, Crete is slightly above 8,000 km2.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express his thanks to J. Novotný (Prague) and D. Rocchini (Trento) for the valuable discussions about Korcak analysis.
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Imre, A.R. Description of the area distribution of landmasses by Korcak exponent—the importance of the Arabic and Indian subcontinents in proper classification. Arab J Geosci 8, 3615–3619 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-014-1481-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-014-1481-0