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The Canadian Arctic Archipelago, also known as just the Arctic Archipelago, is an archipelago north of the Canadian mainland in the Arctic. Situated in the northern extremity of North America and covering about 1,424,500&_160;km² (550,003&_160;sq&_160;mi), this group of 36,563 islands comprises much of the territory of Northern Canada – most of Nunavut and part of Northwest Territories. The archipelago extends some 2,400&_160;km (1,491&_160;mi) longitudinally and 1,900&_160;km (1,181&_160;mi) from the mainland to Cape Columbia, the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island. It is bounded on the west by the Beaufort Sea; on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the east by Greenland, Baffin Bay and Davis Strait; and on the south by Hudson Bay and the Canadian mainland. The various islands are separated from each other and the continental mainland by a series of waterways collectively known as the Northwestern Passages. Two large peninsulas, Boothia and Melville, extend northward from the mainland. The archipelago contains 94 major islands (greater than 130&_160;km² (50&_160;sq&_160;mi)), including three of the world's ten largest islands, and 36,469 minor islands. The sizeable islands of the archipelago (over 10,000&_160;km² (3,861&_160;sq&_160;mi), in order of descending size) are After Greenland, the archipelago is the world’s largest high-Arctic land area. The climate of the islands is arctic, and the terrain consists of tundra except in mountainous areas. Most of the islands are uninhabited; human settlement is extremely thin and scattered, being mainly coastal Inuit settlements on the southern islands.
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