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Archipelago
 
 
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For other uses, see Archipelago (disambiguation)
Archipelago (disambiguation)

Archipelago may refer to:In geography* Archipelago, a landform which consists of a chain or cluster of islands* The Archipelago, Ontario, a township in Canada on Georgian Bay...
An archipelago is a chain or cluster of island
Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
s that are formed tectonically. The word archipelago literally means "chief sea
SEA

See also: Sea and seasThe three-letter acronym SEA may refer to:People/organizations/businesses*Scientists and Engineers for America, a pro-science political advocacy group....
", from Italian
Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
 arcipelago , derived ultimately from Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 arkhon (arkhi-) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea").






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For other uses, see Archipelago (disambiguation)
Archipelago (disambiguation)

Archipelago may refer to:In geography* Archipelago, a landform which consists of a chain or cluster of islands* The Archipelago, Ontario, a township in Canada on Georgian Bay...
Merguiarchipelagomap
An archipelago is a chain or cluster of island
Island

An island or isle is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls are called islets....
s that are formed tectonically. The word archipelago literally means "chief sea
SEA

See also: Sea and seasThe three-letter acronym SEA may refer to:People/organizations/businesses*Scientists and Engineers for America, a pro-science political advocacy group....
", from Italian
Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
 arcipelago , derived ultimately from Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 arkhon (arkhi-) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea"). In Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity
Classical 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....
, the Archipelago (Greek: ????p??a???) was the proper name for the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkans and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively....
 and, later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands
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....
 (since the sea is remarkable for its large number of islands). It is now used to generally refer to any island group or, sometimes, to a sea containing a large number of scattered islands like the Aegean Sea
Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkans and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively....
.

Types of archipelagos

Archipelagos are usually found in the open sea; less commonly, a large land mass
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 km? which is about 29.2% of its total surface....
 may neighbour them. For example, Scotland
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
 has more than 700 islands surrounding its mainland. Archipelagos are often volcanic
Volcano

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....
, forming along island arcs generated by subduction zones or hotspots
Hotspot (geology)

In geology, a hotspot is a location on the Earth's surface that has experienced active volcano for a long period of time. 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....
, but there are many other processes involved in their construction, including erosion
Erosion

For morphological image processing operations, see Erosion 'For use of in dermatopathology, see Erosion Erosion is the removal of solids in the natural environment....
, deposition, and land elevation.

The five largest modern countries that are mainly archipelagos are Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country 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 Philippines
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

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous Islands of New Zealand, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands....
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 and Indonesia
Indonesia

The Republic of Indonesia , is a transcontinental country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Comprising Islands of Indonesia, it is the world's largest Archipelago state....
 (the world's largest archipelagic state according to the CIA World Factbook).

The largest archipelago in the world by size is the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
Canadian Arctic Archipelago

The Canadian Arctic Archipelago, also known as just the Arctic Archipelago, is an archipelago north of the Canada mainland in the Arctic. Situated in the northern extremity of North America and covering about , this group of 36,563 islands comprises much of the territory of Northern Canada ? most of Nunavut and part of Northwest Territo...
 of Northern Canada
Northern Canada

File:Northern Canada.svgNorthern Canada, colloquially the North, is the vast northernmost region of Canada variously defined by geography and politics....
. It is situated in the Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean

The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic North Pole region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions....
. The archipelago with most islands is the Archipelago Sea
Archipelago Sea

Archipelago Sea is a part of the Baltic Sea between the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland and the Sea of ?land, within Finland territorial waters....
 in Finland
Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland , is a Nordic countries 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....
 and Sweden
Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
, but these islands are, on average, small.

See also

  • Island arc
  • Geography
    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"....
  • Earth science
    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....
  • Geomorphology
    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 mathematical model....
  • List of landforms
    Landform

    In the earth sciences and geology sub-fields a landform or physical feature comprises a geomorphology 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....
  • Plate tectonics
    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
    Island nation

    An island country is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands. As of 2008, forty-seven of the List of countries are island countries....
  • Earthsea
    Earthsea

    Earthsea is a fictional realm created by Ursula K. Le Guin for her short story "The Word of Unbinding", published in 1964, but that became more famous in her novel A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968....
  • The World
    The World (archipelago)

    The World is a man-made archipelago of 300 islands constructed in the shape of a world map and located four kilometres off the coast of Dubai, United Arab Emirates....
  • Lists of islands: see List of archipelagos
    List of archipelagos

    This is a list of archipelagos, organized by oceans and seas....
     and List of islands
    List of islands

    This is a list of islands in the world grouped by oceans and by continents. For rank-order lists, see the List_of_islands#Other_lists_of_islands below....