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Big Islands
Earth ’s big islands have various origins . Some of them were part of larger continents that broke aside . Others form at the boundary between tectonic dental plate , or rise in an expanse of intense volcanic bodily process .
Their isolation from the mainland provides opportunity to study unparalleled kinds of wildlife , as well as to see how clime change affects a modest area . Read more about the 10 heavy islands and their geologic origins in this slideshow .
Ellesmere Island
75,767 straight miles ( 196,236 substantial km )
Ellesmere Island is Canada ’s third - large icy island . The region is mostly craggy , with some of its marvelous peaks covered by ice caps that themselves return glaciers that flow into the sea , concord to the University of Guelph . The island , as well as the part around it , was shaped by a monolithic glacial ice sheet of paper that cover Canada during the last ice age .
Much of the island is carve by fjords , while the northerly coast is dominate by the water ice as well as the Mountains of Grant Land , sedimentary rocks that are about 100,000 years one-time , according to the Canadian Encyclopedia .
Japan’s Honshu island stretches across the majority of this 2001 NASA satellite image.
Victoria Island
83,896 square mil ( 217,291 square kilometre )
Victoria Island , Canada ’s secondly - largest , lie in the Arctic Island region of the res publica . Like much of the surrounding area , the island was underneath a Brobdingnagian glacial tack during the last ice age and is still the situation of a good deal of ice today . Given its distant location in the N , the island is not very populated and is mostly an area of windswept tundra .
The bulk of the island is made up of sedimentary rock , grant to the Canadian Encyclopedia , but there is a portion with Precambrian rock ‘n’ roll that is lined with copper , a resource frequently used by a striation of Inuit , or aboriginals , in the realm . frosty field on the island are complex due to the island ’s varying geology : it includes a large river ( Kuujjua ) , spate and drop .
Ice breaks up around Canada’s Ellesmere Island in this NASA satellite image.
Victoria Island is also the site of the world ’s largestisland - in - a - lake - on - an - island - in - a - lake - on - an - island . The midget sub - sub - sub - island is unidentified and has likely never been visited by humans , given that Victoria Island has a population of just 2,000 people .
Great Britain
88,150 square mile ( 228,300 straightforward kilometre ) *
Great Britain is a heavily settled island just nor'-west of the continent of Europe . However , as recently as 600 million years ago , what we now consider one island wasseparated into two parts that were very far aside , according to the BBC .
Scotland and northwestern Ireland were part of the Laurentia continent in the south of the equator , a dowery of a large land mass that includes mod North America . Ireland , England and Wales were a part of Avalonia , a small continent ( including today ’s Newfoundland ) that was close to the Antarctic Circle .
Canada’s Victoria Island lies under cloud in the southeast area of this NASA satellite image.
The two Continent gradually moved north over zillion of long time and merged in the supercontinent Pangaea . after , Great Britain became a part of Europe and evolved into an island when ocean level rose .
- include Ireland
Honshu
87,992 square miles ( 227,898 square km )
Honshu is Japan ’s large and most populated island , forming the bulk of Japan ’s landmass . Japan lies just east of North Korea and South Korea in the Sea of Japan . Honshu and the rest period of Japan are part of avery active architectonic area call the Pacific Ring of Fire , the zone where about 90 per centum of the human beings ’s earthquakes ( and 80 per centum of the big ones ) occur .
While the expanse is hard cultivated by human populations and USDA , there are some prominent natural feature on Honshu that host wildlife . Among them is the Shinano River , which is the farseeing in Japan , and the Japanese Alps .
Snow covers much of Great Britain in this January 2013 image.
Large temblor have been recorded throughout the account of human habitation on Honshu . Most recently , adevastating 8.9 - magnitude earthquake in March 2011struck Japan from an origin faithful to Honshu . Ecologists are still determining the long - term impact on wildlife after a nuclear plant , which failed amid the earthquake and result tsunami , sentcontaminated water into the sea .
Sumatra
185,635 straight miles ( 480,793 square km ) *
Sumatra , which is geographically a part of Indonesia , lies just below Malaysia in the Indian Ocean . The island is most famous for its volcanic activity . It has a dozen active volcanoes and 170 memorialise eruptions since AD 1000 , according to a 2004 presentation at the thirty-second International Geological Congress on Cenozoic volcanic geology . In the region , the famousexplosion of Krakatoa volcano in 1883destroyed an island that was there at the time .
The realm ’s active plate tectonics also commit rise to an unusual earthquake in 2012 , whenthe quake in reality moved across four faults , including three that are perpendicular to each other . The strike - elusion earthquake , which takes place when parts of Earth ’s crust coast along each other horizontally , generated an 8.6 - magnitude seism in the seafloor just west of Sumatra .
Smoke from fires covers much of Sumatra in this June 2003 image.
Through plate architectonics , Sumatra do to be at theboundary of two tectonic plateful : the Indian / Australian plate that is just SW of the island , and the Eurasiatic plate upon which Sumatra and neighboring island ride .
- image include adjoining island
Baffin Island
195,928 straight miles ( 507,451 square km )
Baffin Island , in the far north of Canada , is part of the Arctic Archipelago . The island is the largest in Canada and the fifth - largest in the world . Much of the island is get over in loggerheaded glacier chalk , but that is run away due to climate change . At least one Canadian study hasidentified the island as a potential resource for minelaying , particularly for wanted metals , base metals and diamonds .
The island contains both apart glaciers and an ice detonating equipment , that is a remnant of the Laurentide ice piece of paper , a monumental ice block that extended over most of Canada during the last chicken feed age .
Baffin Island, part of the Arctic Archipelago and the largest island in Canda.
Baffin Island is of finicky interest to climatologist because it has shown how ice sheets exposit and forswear in reply to temperature changes . glacier in the Arctic , including in Baffin Island , expanded quickly during a cool event 8,200 years ago , that only took place over 150 eld . Temperatures fell 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit ( 3 degree Celsius ) in just 20 years during that period .
Madagascar
226,658 square miles ( 587,041 straight km )
Madagascar lies just off the southeastern coast of Africa . It has been separate from the coast for about 88 million years , but underwent a complex geologic history before it broke off .
About 170 million eld ago , Madagascar was part of the Brobdingnagian supercontinent Gondwana , harmonize to the University of California , Berkeley ’s Museum of Paleontology . As the Earth ’s crust shifted , Madagascar ( which was then attach to India ) separated from Africa and South America , then from Australia and Antarctica . finally , India crashed into Asia and create the Himalayas . Madagascar was leave on its own in the Indian Ocean .
Once almost entirely covered in green, lush vegetation, Madagascar has witnessed the destruction of an estimated 80 percent of its indigenous forests. The now reddish-brown terrain can be seen in this true-color image of northern Madagascar acquired on 9 January 2025, by NASA’s Terra satellite.
Because of its prospicient isolation , a wide array ofunique fauna evolved on Madagascar , making it one of the most biodiverse lieu on Earth . More than 80 percent of the island ’s species are found nowhere else . broad deforestation is wreaking havoc with the biosphere on Madagascar , but conservationists are making sweat to aid . Some researchers aresuggesting that tortoises be imported on to the islandto replace extinct ones . However , other species — such as the island ’s ribbon trees — are still confront extinction .
Borneo
292,000 satisfying mil ( 755,000 square klick )
Borneo lies in the SouthChinaSea in between Singapore / Malaysia on the Mae West , Indonesia on the due east , and the Philippines to the northeast . The island itself is divided between several countries .
The island is particularly noted for its primates , as it is host to at least 10 primate metal money , according to Ohio ’s Miami University ’s ground exhibitions program .
Kalimantan, part of the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo.
The orangutang has captivate the care of environmentalist since it is speedily fall behind its home ground , and only be on Borneo and Sumatra . A"secret population " of orangutanswas get wind on Borneo in 2013 .
While Borneo is surround by water now , for much of the third period ( from 65 million years ago to about 1.6 million years ago ) , it was likely connected to the Southeast Asiatic mainland , according to the World Wildlife Federation . change in Earth ’s tectonic plates about three million age ago caused Borneo to break off the larger nation mass .
New Guinea
309,000 square miles ( 800,000 straight km )
New Guinea lies just north of Australia and is split up into two different land : Papua ( the Indonesian realm of the island , in the west ) and Papua New Guinea in the eastern United States , an self-governing land since 1975 .
The island is a hotbed of volcanic action , particularly when it come to Ulawan , a volcano site on Papua New Guinea ’s New Britain Island . Due to its intimacy to human settlements , the nearly 1.5 - Roman mile - high ( 2.3 kilometre ) volcano wasdeclared a " decade volcano"by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth ’s Interior . ( This designation mean it is one of 16 volcano worth further study due to its eruptive history and law of proximity to hoi polloi . ) That vent alone raze the metropolis of Rabaul twice , in 1937 and 1994 , harmonise to the CIA World Factbook .
Fires cover much of New Guinea in this 2002 image.
New Guinea is quite young , geographically speaking , because it was form in the area between two tectonic plates : one belonging to the Pacific Ocean , and the other a part of the ancient continent of Australia , accord to the Embassy of Papua New Guinea to the Americas in Washington , D.C.
Its volcanic and seismic activity arises from this combating shell , which also make it part of the " Ring of Fire " that encircle the Pacific Rim .
New Guinea is also a space of dramatic biodiversityand unique creature , many of which have only recently been discovered .
Ice topped Greenland can be seen in this cloud-free satellite image.
Greenland
836,330 hearty miles ( 2,166,086 straight kilometers )
Greenland is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean just east of the Arctic islands of North America , and west of Iceland . The island , in fact , is link up to North America through a bomber ridge about 600 foot ( 180 meters ) underneath the weewee . Greenland is considered a part of the Canadian Shield , which is a Brobdingnagian expanse made up of some of theoldest rock candy on Earth .
The island is perhaps best cognise for a immense methamphetamine sheet that , according to the Encyclopedia Britannica , is only dwarfed by Antarctica in physical size . With an intermediate heaviness of 5,000 feet ( 1,500 meters ) , the ice sheet lies over more than four - fifth of Greenland ’s domain . As snow falls on the sheet , the ice layers compress and form glacier that menstruate out to ocean . Jakobshavn Glacier , look at one of the quickest - move glacier globally , moves 100 foot ( 30 meters ) daily .
scientist are presently keep a closemouthed oculus on the island for how climate change is impact the ice . the right way now , the picture is mixed : An April 2013 study suggested thatfuture icing melt may slowdue to narrow fjords that block ice menses , and other raw processes , but a March 2013 study suggest thatisolated glaciers are melting rapidly .
