Study Guide & Educational Overview
### Archipelagic & Oceanic Geographic Features:
* **The World's Largest Islands**: Greenland (world's largest non-continental island), New Guinea, Borneo (divided between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei), and Madagascar.
* **Archipelagic Nations**: Indonesia (over 17,000 islands spanning 5,000 km), Philippines (over 7,600 islands), Japan (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku), and the Maldives (lowest-lying atoll nation).
* **Geological Origins**: Coral atolls formed by subsiding volcanic peaks encircled by fringing reefs; hotspot island chains like Hawaii; continental fragments like Madagascar and New Zealand.
* **Notable Straits & Passages**: Cook Strait separating New Zealand's islands, Strait of Dover in the English Channel, and the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania.
* **The World's Largest Islands**: Greenland (world's largest non-continental island), New Guinea, Borneo (divided between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei), and Madagascar.
* **Archipelagic Nations**: Indonesia (over 17,000 islands spanning 5,000 km), Philippines (over 7,600 islands), Japan (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku), and the Maldives (lowest-lying atoll nation).
* **Geological Origins**: Coral atolls formed by subsiding volcanic peaks encircled by fringing reefs; hotspot island chains like Hawaii; continental fragments like Madagascar and New Zealand.
* **Notable Straits & Passages**: Cook Strait separating New Zealand's islands, Strait of Dover in the English Channel, and the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania.
Frequently Asked Questions
Borneo is shared among Indonesia (Kalimantan), Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), and the Sultanate of Brunei.
A fringing coral reef builds upward around an oceanic volcanic island as the central volcano slowly subsides or erodes away, leaving a ring of coral enclosing a lagoon.
