Island Types

There are mainly three kinds of islands: continental islands, oceanic islands, and
coral islands. However, there are also inland islands, such as islands found in the
middle of a lake.

Continental Islands
Continental islands are parts of the continental shelf that rise above the surrounding
water. They are situated on the shallow water margin of a continent, usually in water
less than 200 m deep. Greenland, the largest island in the world, and Newfoundland
are examples of continental islands. A drop in sea level would be sufficient to
connect these islands to the North American continent.

Other rare kind of continental islands consist of small pieces of continental material
that broke away from a land mass. These islands are now part of a separate crustal
plate that follows an independent path. The Seychelles in the Indian Ocean were
once associated with the Madagascar-India portion of the supercontinent Pangaea.
With the break-up of Pangaea about 200 million years ago, the Seychelles began
their independent existence. Their continental basement structure, however, clearly
associates them with the continents rather than with oceanic islands of volcanic
origin.

Oceanic Islands

O ceanic islands arise from volcanic action related to the movement of the
lithospheric, continent-bearing crustal plates. Unlike continental islands, oceanic
islands grow from oceanic crust. Oceanic islands are not scattered haphazardly
about in the deep ocean waters, but are aligned along tectonic plate boundaries
where crust is being created or sub-ducted.
Coral Islands
Coral islands are distinct from both continental islands and oceanic islands in that
they are formed of once living creatures, the corals, which colonise in place to form
coral reefs.

Barrier Islands
Unrelated to this three-part classification of islands are islands of a fourth kind,
namely the barrier islands. Barrier islands occur in shallow water coastal areas and
are composed of unconsolidated sediment, usually sand. Barrier islands form 15% of
all the coastline in the world, including most of the coastline of the continental United
States and Alaska, and also occur off the shores of bays and the Great Lakes.

How many islands are there?

Islands are intrinsically impermanent. The more stable oceanic islands last for a
relatively brief time of 5 - 10 million years. Some islands drown, as result of erosion,
subsidence of the ocean crust, or rising sea level. Sea levels are related in part to
the amount of water bound up in the polar ice caps or released into the oceans; and
the size of the polar ice caps is related to a variety of factors including variations in
the positions of continents, the orientation of Earth's axis, and the amount of cloud
cover.

Sea level is fairly high now; it was lower during the Little Ice Age, circa fourteenth to
nineteenth century, and even lower about 18 000 years ago. A lowering of sea level
brings drowned islands back into view.

Ongoing volcanism continues to add to existing islands and creates new ones. An
example is Surtsey, off the southern coast of Iceland. This island came into
existence with a submarine volcanic explosion on November 14, 1963, and
continues to increase its surface area as the ongoing lava flows cool. There are also
islands that appear intermittently.

Because islands come and go, the number of islands in existence cannot be
established except in relation to a proscribed time period – a human generation, or a
century or two. With the discovery of some islands in the Russian Arctic in the mid-
twentieth century, however, it is thought that no islands remain to be discovered in
our time. Satellite and ship-based scanning equipment is now being used to search
for islands whose positions appear on nautical maps but which have themselves
disappeared, and to identify underwater sites of new island formation.
Island Formation
The classification of islands based on their foundation, i.e. continental crust versus
oceanic crust versus corals, has been around in some form since it was first
addressed by Darwin in 1840. A study of island formation, however, shows different
geologic events contributing to the genesis of different kinds of islands. The following
discussion of island origins is limited to islands that do not have the geological
characteristics of continents, namely, oceanic islands and coral islands.

Oceanic Islands
The development of plate tectonics theory in the 1960s greatly aided scientists'
understanding of the genesis of islands. Oceanic islands originate in volcanic action
typically associated with the movement of the lithospheric plates.

The lithosphere is the major outer layer of the earth. It consists of the crust — both
continental and oceanic-and upper mantle, and ranges from the surface to 100 km
deep, although sub-ducted crust has been remotely detected at depths of 1 000 km.
(For comparison, the average radius of Earth is 6 731 km). The lithosphere is divided
into rigid, interlocking plates that move with respect to one another.

There are 11 major plates and many smaller ones. The plates move over the next
lower layer at an average rate of 10 - 11 cm per year. The plate boundaries tend to
move away from each other at mid-ocean ridges and approach each other at the
edges of continents.

At the mid-ocean ridges, magma wells up and cools, forming mountains. At the same
time, existing sea floor spreads apart, and new sea floor is created. As sea-floor
spreading continues, the mountains, which sit on ocean crust, are carried away from
the mid-ocean ridge and therefore away from the source of new lava deposits. Many
of these undersea mountains, as a result, never grow tall enough that their tops
could emerge as islands. These submarine mountains are known as seamounts. It is
possible to date the age of seamounts with some accuracy by measuring their
distance from the ridge where they were born.
Coral Islands
Coral islands are (usually) low-lying islands formed by hermatypic, or reef-building,
corals, chiefly scleractinian corals and hydrocorallians. Reef-building corals occur in
a broad band stretching around the globe from 25 degrees north of the equator to 25
degrees south of the equator and require an average water temperature of about 20
- 25°C. They do not grow below 50 m in depth. They also have specific needs for
water salinity, clarity, calmness, and sunlight. Sunlight aids in formation of the living
corals' exoskeleton, and so aids in reef-building. Corals anchor on something —
seamounts, submarine slopes of islands, or debris such as abandoned army
vehicles and bedsprings — and therefore are generally found at the edges of
continents or existing islands. If the surface of a reef emerges into the air — through,
for example, a slight drop in sea level — the creatures dry up and die. The exposed,
dead surface of the reef then serves as a platform for the accumulation of sediment,
which may in turn become sufficient to support plant and animal life. Thus, offshore
islands in tropical and semi-tropical zones around the world often have a core of
emerged, dead coral reef. For example, a reef that emerged in about 3450 BC
provided the base on which all of the islands in the Maupihaa Atoll, in the Society
Islands, are founded. Indeed, study of the rate of uplift of emerged coral reefs has
helped scientists determine local sea levels in past eras.

Island Biogeography
Islands may be regarded as closed ecosystems. Although this is not true in every
case — witness the island-hopping of species on the Hawaiian-Emperor island chain
— or at all times for any given island, the relative isolation of islands has made them
an ideal setting in which to explore theories of evolution and adaptation.

Two words frequently used in relation to island environments are equilibrium and
change. Ecosystems in equilibrium are assumed to have reached steady state, with
very slow rates of change. No more is taken out of the ecosystem than is
replenished; predator-prey relationships remain constant, and die-offs are balanced
by new colonization. Whereas the individual species involved in these interactions
may change, the overriding patterns do not. The equilibrium model of insular
biogeography was formally stated in the 1960s by R. H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson
and has been used to, among other things, establish and manage natural preserves
on both islands and mainlands.

Island Economics
Islands provide a variety of economic features. In addition to fish (and animals that
feed on fish) as a food source, shells have been used as money and exported in
jewellery. Coral has many uses, including manufacture into road-building material,
jewellery, and small implements. Harbours promote ocean trade. Snorkelling draws
tourists, and some tropical woods are in high demand.
Biogeography: The distribution and relationship of plants and animals to a
geographic locale.

Island arc is a curved row of islands of volcanic origin that develops where two
lithospheric plates converge, usually near the edge of a continent, and associated
with the formation of a deep trench parallel to the arc as oceanic crust is sub-ducted.

Magma is hot, liquid material that underlies areas of volcanic activity and forms
igneous rock; magma at Earth's surface is called lava.

Protection of the islands

The protection of the islands is being addressed on several fronts (Formation of
Islands, 2012). International attention has been directed toward the renewable use of
resources and the training of island biologists. Island and marine parks have been
proposed. As some island species are approaching extinction before their origins are
known, scientists are increasingly concerned about raising awareness of the special
features of islands and their contributions to geological and evolutionary knowledge.