Island chain

NASA satellite image of some of the islands in the Hawaiian island chain

An island chain is a group of islands in which the individual islands are lined up along an imaginary straight or curved line.

Usually a chain of islands is of volcanic origin. If the island chain is at the edge of a subduction zone , it is generally an island arc . Straight chain of islands are mostly created by the drifting of a lithospheric plate over a hot spot , as a result of which volcanoes repeatedly formed over the course of time, which drifted away and became extinct. The Hawaiian Islands are the prime example of such a chain of islands.

Some island chains

• Aleutian Islands (USA), a volcanic island arc
• Aeolian Islands (Italy)
• Ellice Islands (Tuvalu)
• Florida Keys (USA), about 350 km
• Frisian Islands (Netherlands, Germany and Denmark)
• Hawaii Islands up to and including Kure and Midway (USA), runs over 3000 km across the Central Pacific, volcanic islands and atolls
• Izu Islands (Japan)
• Kornati Islands (Croatia)
• Canary Islands (Spain)
• Kermadec Islands (New Zealand)
• Lofoten (Norway)
• Mascarene Mountains (Indian Ocean)
• New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
• East Asian island arcs in the western Pacific from Kamchatka to Taiwan
  • Kuril Islands 1200 km (Russia / Japan)
  • Japanese chain of islands: about 5000 km; the largest of these islands are Sakhalin (Russian), Hokkaidō , Honshū , Shikoku and Kyushu
  • Ryūkyū Islands with Okinawa
• Samoa Islands (Samoa, USA)
• Sunda Arch
  • Great Sunda Islands
  • Lesser Sunda Islands
• West Indies , Cuba to Aruba: almost 3500 km
  • Greater Antilles
  • Lesser Antilles
    • Leeward Islands
    • Leeward Islands
  • Bahamas , a reef platform
  • Line Islands in the Central Pacific
  • Austral Islands in the South Pacific