Information about Island

A small island in the Adriatic Sea

An island (IPA: /aɪ.lɪnd/) or isle (IPA: /aɪ.ʌl/) is any piece of land that is completely surrounded by water, above high tide, and isolated from other significant landmasses. 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, IPA [aɪət]. There are two main types of islands: continental islands and oceanic islands. There are also artificial islands. A grouping of geographically and/or geologically related islands is called an archipelago.

The word island comes from Old English ī(e)gland (literally, "watery land"). However, the spelling of the word was modified in the 15th century by association with the etymologically unrelated Old French loanword isle.^[1]

Definition

A small Fijian island.

There is no standard of size which distinguishes islands from islets and continents. Any landmass surrounded by water could be considered an island. Under this terminology all the land masses on the planet could be considered islands.

Also, when defining islands as pieces of land that are completely surrounded by water, narrow bodies of water like rivers and canals are generally left out of consideration. For instance, in France the Canal du Midi connects the Garonne river to the Mediterranean Sea, thereby completing a continuous water connection from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. So technically, the land mass that includes the Iberian Peninsula and the part of France that is south of the Garonne River and the Canal du Midi is completely surrounded by water. For a completely natural example, the Orinoco River splits into two branches near Tamatama, in Amazonas state, Venezuela. The southern branch flows south and joins the Rio Negro, and then the Amazon. Thus, all of the Guianas (Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana) and substantial parts of Brazil and Venezuela are surrounded by (river or ocean) water. These instances are not generally considered islands.

This also helps explain why Africa-Eurasia can be seen as one continuous landmass (and thus technically the biggest island): generally the Suez Canal is not seen as something that divides the land mass in two.

On the other hand, an island may still be described as such despite the presence of a land bridge, e.g., Singapore and its causeway or the various Dutch delta Islands, such as IJsselmonde. The retaining of the island description may therefore be to some degree simply due to historical reasons - though the land bridges are often of a different geological nature (for example sand instead of stone), and thus the islands remain islands in a more scientific sense as well.

Types

Continental islands

Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay

Continental islands are bodies of land that lie on the continental shelf of a continent. Examples include Greenland and Sable Island off North America; Barbados and Trinidad off South America; Great Britain, Ireland and Sicily off Europe; Sumatra and Java off Asia; and New Guinea and Tasmania off Australia.

A special type of continental island is the microcontinental island, which results when a continent is rifted. Examples are Madagascar off Africa; the Kerguelen Islands; and some of the Seychelles.

Another subtype is an island or bar formed by deposition of sediment where a water current loses some of its carrying capacity. An example is barrier islands, which are accumulations of sand deposited by sea currents on the continental shelf. Another example is islands in river deltas or in large rivers. While some are transitory and may disappear if the volume or speed of the current changes, others are stable and long-lived.

Oceanic islands

The islands of Hawai'i are volcanic islands.

Wake Island is a volcanic island that has become an atoll.

Oceanic islands are ones that do not sit on continental shelves. They are volcanic in origin. One type of oceanic island is found in a volcanic island arc. These islands arise from volcanoes where the subduction of one plate under another is occurring. Examples include the Mariana Islands, the Aleutian Islands, Republic of Mauritius and most of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the Lesser Antilles and the South Sandwich Islands are the only Atlantic Ocean examples.

Another type of oceanic island occurs where an oceanic rift reaches the surface. There are two examples: Iceland, which is the world's largest volcanic island, and Jan Mayen — both are in the Atlantic.

A third type of oceanic island is formed over volcanic hotspots. A hotspot is more or less stationary relative to the moving tectonic plate above it, so a chain of islands results as the plate drifts. Over long periods of time, this type of island is eventually eroded down and "drowned" by isostatic adjustment, becoming a seamount. Plate movement across a hot-spot produces a line of islands oriented in the direction of the plate movement. An example is the Hawaiian Islands, from Hawaii to Kure, which then extends beneath the sea surface in a more northerly direction as the Emperor Seamounts. Another chain with similar orientation is the Tuamotu Archipelago; its older, northerly trend is the Line Islands. The southernmost chain is the Austral Islands, with its northerly trending part the atolls in the nation of Tuvalu. Tristan da Cunha is an example of a hotspot volcano in the Atlantic Ocean. Another hot spot in the Atlantic is the island of Surtsey, which was formed in 1963.

An atoll is an island formed from a coral reef that has grown on an eroded and submerged volcanic island. The reef rises to the surface of the water and forms a new island. Atolls are typically ring-shaped with a central lagoon. Examples include the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Line Islands in the Pacific.

References

1. ^ Island. Dictionary.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-05.

External links

Definition of island from United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
Listing of islands from United Nations Island Directory.

International Phonetic Alphabet

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The International
Phonetic Alphabet
History
Nonstandard symbols
Extended IPA
Naming conventions
IPA for English The
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This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language.

See International Phonetic Alphabet for English for a more complete version and Pronunciation respelling for English for phonetic
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atoll is an island of coral that encircles a lagoon partially or completely.

Usage

Beau Briggs, the foremost atoll expert, says that the word atoll comes from the Dhivehi (an Indo-Aryan language spoken on the Maldive Islands) word atholhu
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islet is a small island. It is not to be confused with eyelet.

Definition of Types

Rock

A "rock", sometimes a synonym for a type of "islet", is a landform composed of rock, lying offshore, having no or minimal vegetation, and uninhabited (see
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A cay (also spelled key or quay; all are pronounced alike as "key" IPA: /kiː/) is a small, low island consisting mostly of sand or coral.
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See also AIT and oat

An ait (or eyot) is a small island found in the middle of a river or lake. It is especially used to refer to islands found on the River Thames in England.
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artificial island is an island that has been man-made rather than formed by natural means. They are created by expanding existing islets, construction on existing reefs, or amalgamating several natural islets into a bigger island.
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archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago literally means "chief sea", from Greek arkhon (arkhi-) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea").
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Old English/Anglo-Saxon}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: ang
ISO 639-3: ang Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon^[1], Englisc
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15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500.

Events

1402: Ottoman and Timurid Empires fight at the Battle of Ankara resulting in Timur's capture of Bayezid I.
1402: The conquest of the Canary Islands signals the beginning of the Spanish Empire.

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Etymology is the study of the history of words - when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.

In languages with a long written history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to
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islet is a small island. It is not to be confused with eyelet.

Definition of Types

Rock

continent is one of several large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, but seven areas are commonly regarded as continents – they are (from largest in size to smallest): Asia, Africa, North America, South America,
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planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion in its core, and has cleared its neighbouring region of
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river is a natural waterway that transits water through a landscape from higher to lower elevations. It is an integral component of the water cycle. The water within a river is generally collected from precipitation through surface runoff, groundwater recharge (as seen at baseflow
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Canals are artificial channels for water.

There are two main types of canals: irrigation canals, which are used for the delivery of water, and waterways, which are navigable transportation canals used for passage of goods and people, often connected to (and sometimes
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State Party France
Type Cultural
Criteria i, ii, iv, vi
Reference 770
Region Europe and North America

Inscription History
Inscription 1996 (20th Session)
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Origin Pyrenees
Mouth Gironde estuary,
Atlantic Ocean
Basin countries France, Spain
Length 575 km
Source elevation 1,872 m

Basin area 84,811 km² *
* including Dordogne The Garonne (in French: Garonne
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Mediterranean is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia. It covers an approximate area of 2.
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Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres (41.1 million square miles), it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface.
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The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar. It is the western and southernmost of the three southern European peninsulas (the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas).
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ORiNOCO is the brand name that was used for a family of wireless networking solutions by Proxim (previously Lucent). These chipsets provide wireless connectivity for 802.11-compliant Wireless LANs.
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Suez Canal (Arabic: قناة السويس, transliteration: Qanā al-Suways
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IJsselmonde is a river island between the Nieuwe Maas, Noord and Oude Maas branches rivers of the in the Dutch province of Zuid Holland. The city of Rotterdam now occupies most of the northern part of the island and includes the eponymous former village of IJsselmonde, once a
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continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent and associated coastal plain, which is covered during interglacial periods such as the current epoch by relatively shallow seas (known as shelf seas) and gulfs.
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Anthem
Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit
Nuna asiilasooq

Capital
(and largest city) Nuuk (Godthåb)

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