Habitat and Environment of Islands— Primary and Supplemental Island Sets Professional Paper 1590 EXPLANATION Primary Island Set Supplemental Island Set A Supplemental Island Set B U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey HABITAT AND ENVIRONMENT OF ISLANDS Primary and Supplemental Island Sets By N.C. Matalas and Bernardo F. Grossling U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 1590 U.S. Department of the Interior GALE A. NORTON, Secretary U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY Charles G. Groat, Director Any use of trade, product, or firm names in this report is for identification purposes only and does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. Government Reston, Virginia 2002 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Matalas, Nicholas C., 1930– Habitat and environment of islands : primary and supplemental island sets / by N.C. Matalas and Bernardo F. Grossling. p. cm. — (U.S. Geological Survey professional paper ; 1590) Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-607-99508-4 1. Island ecology. 2. Habitat (Ecology) I. Grossling, Bernardo F., 1918– II. Title. III. Series. QH541.5.I8 M27 2002 577.5’2—dc21 2002035440 For sale by the U.S. Geological Survey Information Services Box 25286, Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225 PREFACE The original intent of the study was to develop a first-order synopsis of island hydrology with an inte- grated geologic basis on a global scale. As the study progressed, the aim was broadened to provide a frame- work for subsequent assessments on large regional or global scales of island resources and impacts on those resources that are derived from global changes. Fundamental to the study was the development of a comprehensive framework — a wide range of parameters that describe a set of "saltwater" islands sufficiently large to •Characterize the spatial distribution of the world’s islands; •Account for all major archipelagos; •Account for almost all oceanically isolated islands, and •Account collectively for a very large proportion of the total area of the world’s islands whereby additional islands would only marginally contribute to the representativeness and accountability of the island set. The comprehensive framework, which is referred to as the “Primary Island Set,” is built on 122 parameters that describe 1,000 islands. To complement the investigations based on the Primary Island Set, two supplemental island sets, Set A – Other Islands (not in the Primary Island Set) and Set B – Lagoonal Atolls, are included in the study. The Primary Island Set, together with the Supplemental Island Sets A and B, provides a framework that can be used in various scientific disciplines for their island-based studies on broad regional or global scales. The study uses an informal, coherent, geophysical organization of the islands that belong to the three island sets. The organization is in the form of a global island chain, which is a particular sequential ordering of the islands referred to as the “Alisida.” The Alisida was developed through a trial-and-error procedure by seeking to strike a balance between “minimizing the length of the global chain” and “maximizing the chain’s geophysical coherence.” The fact that an objective function cannot be minimized and maximized simultaneously indicates that the Alisida is not unique. Global island chains other than the Alisida may better serve disciplines other than those of hydrology and geology. Preface III IV HABITAT AND ENVIRONMENT OF ISLANDS Primary and Supplemental Island Sets CONTENTS Preface................................................................................................................................................................................... III Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................................................. XI Overview ............................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Primary Island Set ................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Identification Parameters............................................................................................................................................. 12 Historical Parameters .................................................................................................................................................. 14 First European Contact...................................................................................................................................... 14 Other Names of the Islands ............................................................................................................................... 17 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 21 Geographic Parameters ............................................................................................................................................... 21 Locations of Islands .......................................................................................................................................... 22 Island Affinities ................................................................................................................................................. 25 Topologic Properties of the Islands................................................................................................................... 26 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 29 Physiographic Parameters ........................................................................................................................................... 30 Size of Islands ................................................................................................................................................... 30 Quantitative Descriptors of Island Groups........................................................................................................ 33 Qualitative Descriptors of Island Topographies ................................................................................................ 33 Qualitative Descriptors of Island Shapes .......................................................................................................... 36 Dimensional Measures of Islands ..................................................................................................................... 39 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 40 Geologic Parameters ................................................................................................................................................... 41 Relational Features of the Earth’s Surface ........................................................................................................ 41 Geologic Classification ..................................................................................................................................... 44 Volcanism.......................................................................................................................................................... 45 Geologic Topology............................................................................................................................................ 45 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 45 Hydrologic Parameters................................................................................................................................................ 53 Hydrologic Sketch............................................................................................................................................. 53 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 54 Economic Parameters.................................................................................................................................................. 60 Sovereignty of Islands....................................................................................................................................... 60 Populations of Islands and Principal Centers.................................................................................................... 64 Principal Seaports and Airports......................................................................................................................... 69 Local Time ........................................................................................................................................................ 72 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................... 72 Environmental Parameters..........................................................................................................................................