An archipelago (pronounced /ɑrkɨˈpɛləɡoʊ/) is a chain or cluster of islands An island or isle (/ˈaɪl/) is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets. A key or cay is another name for a small island or islet. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot, /ˈaɪ.ət/. There are two main types of islands: continental islands and oceanic that are formed tectonically. The word archipelago literally means "chief sea The term sea refers to certain large bodies of water, but there is inconsistency as to its precise definition and application. Most commonly, a sea may refer to a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, but it is also used sometimes for a large saline lake that lacks a natural outlet, e.g. the Caspian Sea. Colloquially, the term is", from Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City. Standard Italian, adopted by the arcipelago (artʃiˈpelaɡo), derived ultimately from Greek Greek , an Indo-European language native to the southern Balkan peninsula, is the language of the Greeks. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical Ancient Greek literature arkhon (arkhi-) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea"). In Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome collectively known as the Greco-Roman world, the Archipelago (Greek: Αρχιπέλαγος) was the proper name for the Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea (Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος, Aigaio Pelagos, [eˈʝeo ˈpelaɣos] Turkish: Ege Denizi ) is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea and, later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands The Aegean Islands are a group of islands in the Aegean Sea, with mainland Greece to the west and north and Turkey to the east; the island of Crete delimits the sea to the south. The ancient name of the Aegean Sea, Archipelago, was later applied to the islands it contains and is now used more generally, to refer to any island group. The Greek (since the sea is remarkable for its large number of islands). It is now used to generally refer to any island An island or isle (/ˈaɪl/) is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets. A key or cay is another name for a small island or islet. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot, /ˈaɪ.ət/. There are two main types of islands: continental islands and oceanic group or, sometimes, to a sea containing a large number of scattered islands like the Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea (Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος, Aigaio Pelagos, [eˈʝeo ˈpelaɣos] Turkish: Ege Denizi ) is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea.^[1]

Types of archipelagos

Archipelagos are usually found in the open sea; less commonly, a large land mass Land mass refers to the total area of a country or geographical region . The Earth's total land mass is 148,939,063.133 km² (57,511,026.002 square miles) which is about 29.2% of its total surface. Water covers approximately 70.8% of the Earth's surface, mostly in the form of oceans may neighbour them. For example, Scotland Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland has more than 700 islands surrounding its mainland. Archipelagos are often volcanic A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time. The word volcano is derived from Italian vulcano, after Vulcan, the Roman, forming along island arcs An island arc is a type of archipelago formed by plate tectonics as one oceanic tectonic plate subducts under another and produces magma. Island arcs that develop along the edges of a continent may be known as a volcanic arc, though most people find the distinction of little benefit generated by subduction zones or hotspots J. Tuzo Wilson came up with the idea in 1963 that volcanic chains like the Hawaiian Islands result from the slow movement of a tectonic plate across a "fixed" hot spot deep beneath the surface of the planet. Hotspots are thought to be caused by a narrow stream of hot mantle convecting up from the Earth's core-mantle boundary called a, but there are many other processes involved in their construction, including erosion Erosion is the removal of solids in the natural environment. It usually occurs due to transport by wind, water, or ice; by down-slope creep of soil and other material under the force of gravity; or by living organisms, such as burrowing animals, in the case of bioerosion, deposition Deposition is the geological process by which material is added to a landform or land mass. Fluids such as wind and water, as well as sediment gravity flows, transport previously eroded sediment, which, at the loss of enough kinetic energy in the fluid, is deposited, building up layers of sediment, and land elevation.

The five largest modern countries that are mainly archipelagos are Japan Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters which make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which, the Philippines The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, New Zealand New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori named New Zealand Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. The Realm of New Zealand also includes the Cook, the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with and Indonesia The Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia comprises 17,508 islands, and with an estimated population of around 237 million people, it is the world's fourth most populous country, and has the largest Muslim population in the world (the world's largest archipelagic state according to the CIA World Factbook The World Factbook is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. It was originally an annual book, but the 2008 edition was the last to be printed on paper by the CIA. Other companies, such as Skyhorse Publishing will continue printing a).^[2]

The largest archipelago in the world by size is Indonesia.The archipelago with most islands is the Archipelago Sea Archipelago Sea is a part of the Baltic Sea between the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland and the Sea of Åland, within Finnish territorial waters. By some definitions it is the largest archipelago in the world by the number of islands, although the islands are very small and tightly clustered in Finland Finland /ˈfɪnlənd/ , officially the Republic of Finland ( Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info)), is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is, but these islands are generally small.

See also

• Island arc An island arc is a type of archipelago formed by plate tectonics as one oceanic tectonic plate subducts under another and produces magma. Island arcs that develop along the edges of a continent may be known as a volcanic arc, though most people find the distinction of little benefit
• Geography Geography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.). Four historical traditions in geographical research are the spatial analysis of natural and
• Earth science Earth science , is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth science. There are four major disciplines in earth sciences, namely geography, geology,
• Geomorphology Geomorphology is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do: to understand landform history and dynamics, and predict future changes through a combination of field observation, physical experiment, and numerical modeling. Geomorphology is practiced
• List of landforms In the earth sciences and geology sub-fields, a landform or physical feature comprises a geomorphological unit, and is largely defined by its surface form and location in the landscape, as part of the terrain, and as such, is typically an element of topography. Landform elements also include seascape and oceanic waterbody interface features such
• Plate tectonics Plate tectonics describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere. The theory encompasses the older concepts of continental drift, developed during the first decades of the 20th century by Alfred Wegener, and seafloor spreading, understood during the 1960s
• Island nation An island country is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands[citation needed]. As of 2008, forty-seven (appoximately 25%) of the world's countries are island countries
• Earthsea Earthsea is a fictional realm originally created by Ursula K. Le Guin for her short story "The Word of Unbinding", published in 1964, that became more famous in her novel A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968. The books that follow A Wizard of Earthsea are The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea and
• The World The World is a man-made archipelago of 300 islands constructed in the rough shape of a map of the landmasses of the Earth, located 4 kilometres off the coast of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The World is one of several artificial island developments currently under construction in Dubai; the land for these projects was reclaimed from the sea by
• Lists of islands: see List of archipelagos and List of islands This is a list of islands in the world grouped by oceans and by continents. For rank-order lists, see the other lists below

References

1. ^ "Archipelago". Farlex, Inc.. 2008. Archived from the original on 2008. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/archipelago. Retrieved on 2008-10-02.
2. ^ "Indonesia". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. 2008-12-04. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-07.

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