Galapagos

Geographics/Island Life

I am going to start this section with saying that with Island Life I mean literally the islands life, how they form. They are about 1000 kilometers from South America. They are also called the Archipelago of Colon. It is still a young group of islands, and changes with the volcanic explosions. They can be called frequent in comparison to the rest of the world. The islands form and then get slowly carried away by the tectonic plates under it over a hot spot, but this is a paper on the Galapagos, not tectonic plates. You can look it up yourself if you really want to know about them. New lava fields also form. The islands are about 600 miles away from Ecuador. There are 61 different islands and islets (a islet is a small island), as well as thirteen main islands. Very close together, they are Baltra, Espanola, Fernandina, Floreana, Genovesa, Isabela, Marchena, Pinta, Pinzón, San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, And Santiago.  Overall they cover 4897 miles, or 7880 km. With 1771 miles of land, Isabela is the biggest of the islands. Even so, it is less than half the size of the biggest island of Hawaii. The largest volcano is 5600 ft, the highest point in the Galapagos. Hydrothermal vents from the Galapagos created magma, and the islands were created from magma erupting through the crust. Tectonic plates also helped. Galapagos is also 5 million years old. Each island was made from a volcano, and Isabella from 6. The Galapagos is on a raised piece of land under the ocean. That could also have helped with the forming of the Galapagos. There are 12+ of these plates for the plate tectonics.And that concludes Geographics\Island Life.