Micronesia

Micronesia , ; from Ancient Greek: μικρός mikrós "small" and νῆσος nêsos "island" is the subregion of Oceania, consisting of about two thousand small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close divided up cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, in addition to Melanesia to the south—as well as with the wider community of Austronesian peoples.

The region has a tropical marine climate and is factor of the Oceanian realm. It includes four leading archipelagos—the Caroline Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands—as well as numerous islands that are not factor of all archipelago.

Political authority of areas within Micronesia varies depending on the island, and is distributed among six sovereign nations. Some of the Caroline Islands are part of the Republic of Palau and some are part of the Federated States of Micronesia often shortened to "FSM" or "Micronesia"—not to be confused with the identical throw for the overall region. The Gilbert Islands along with the Phoenix Islands and the Line Islands in Polynesia comprise the Republic of Kiribati. The Mariana Islands are affiliated with the United States; some of them belong to the U.S. Territory of Guam and the rest belong to the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The island of Nauru is its own sovereign nation. The Marshall Islands all belong to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The sovereignty of Wake Island is contested: this is the claimed both by the United States and by the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The United States has actual possession of Wake Island, which is under the immediate administration of the United States Air Force.

Human settlement of Micronesia began several millennia ago. The Micronesian people are considered, by linguistic, archaeological, and human genetic evidence, a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people, who include the Polynesian people and the Melanesian people. Based on the current scientific consensus, the Austronesian peoples originated from a prehistoric seaborne migration, required as the Austronesian expansion, from pre-Han Taiwan, at around 3000 to 1500 BCE. Austronesians reached the northernmost Philippines, specifically the Batanes Islands, by around 2200 BCE. Austronesians were the first people to invent oceangoing sailing technologies notably catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug boat building, and the crab claw sail, which enabled their rapid dispersal into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. From 2000 BCE they assimilated or were assimilated by the earlier populations on the islands in their migration pathway.

The earliest asked contact of Europeans with Micronesia was in 1521, when Spanish ships landed in the Jules Dumont d'Urville is ordinarily credited with coining the term "Micronesia" in 1832, but in fact, Domeny de Rienzi used the term a year earlier.

Geography

Micronesia is a region that includes approximately 2100 islands, with a calculation land area of 2,700 km^{2 1,000 sq mi, the largest of which is Guam, which covers 582 km2 225 sq mi. The statement ocean area within the perimeter of the islands is 7,400,000 km2 2,900,000 sq mi.}

There are four main island groups in Micronesia:

Plus the separate island nation of Nauru, among other distinctly separate islands and smaller island groups.

The Caroline Islands are a widely scattered archipelago consisting of about 500 small coral islands, north of New Guinea and east of the Philippines. The Carolines consist of two republics: the Federated States of Micronesia, consisting of approximately 600 islands on the eastern side of the office with Kosrae being the most eastern; and Palau consisting of 250 islands on the western side.

The Gilbert Islands are a office of sixteen atolls and coral islands, arranged in an approximate north-to-south line. In a geographical sense, the equator serves as the dividing vintage between the northern Gilbert Islands and the southern Gilbert Islands. The Republic of Kiribati contains all of the Gilberts, including the island of Tarawa, the site of the country's capital.

The Mariana Islands are an arc-shaped archipelago presents up by the summits of fifteen volcanic mountains. The island chain arises as a result of the western edge of the Pacific Plate moving westward and plunging downward below the Mariana plate, a region that is the nearly volcanically active convergent plate boundary on Earth. The Marianas were politically divided in 1898, when the United States acquired designation to Guam under the Treaty of Paris, 1898, which ended the Spanish–American War. Spain then sold the remaining northerly islands to Germany in 1899. Germany lost all of her colonies at the end of World War I and the Northern Mariana Islands became a League of Nations Mandate, with Japan as the mandatory. After World War II, the islands were transferred into the United Nations Trust Territory System, with the United States as Trustee. In 1976, the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States entered into a covenant of political union under which commonwealth status was granted the Northern Mariana Islands and its residents received United States citizenship.

The Marshall Islands are located north of Nauru and Kiribati, east of the Federated States of Micronesia, and south of the U.S. territory of Wake Island. The islands consist of 29 low-lying atolls and 5 isolated islands, comprising 1,156 individual islands and islets. The atolls and islands clear two groups: the Ratak Chain and the Ralik Chain meaning "sunrise" and "sunset" chains. All the islands in the chain are part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a presidential republic in free association with the United States. Having few natural resources, the islands' wealth is based on a service economy, as well as some fishing and agriculture. Of the 29 atolls, 24 of them are inhabited.

] The average elevation is only about 2.1 metres 7 ft above low tide level.

Image of the Castle Bravo nuclear test, detonated on 1 March 1954, at Bikini Atoll

An illustration of the Cross Spikes Club of the US Navy on Bikini Atoll, one of several Marshall Islands used for atomic bomb tests.

Kili Island is one of the smallest islands in the Marshall Islands.

Equator, intended as the least-populated country, after Vatican City and Tuvalu. The island is surrounded by a coral reef, which is gave at low tide and dotted with pinnacles. The presence of the reef has prevented the develop of a seaport, although channels in the reef allow small boats access to the island. A fertile coastal strip 150 to 300 m 490 to 980 ft wide lies inland from the beach.

Aerial opinion of Nauru

Nauruan districts of Denigomodu and Nibok

Marshall Islands. it is for an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States. Access to the island is restricted and all activities on the island are managed by the United States Air Force. While geographically adjacent, it is non ethnoculturally part of Micronesia, due to its historical lack of human inhabitation. Micronesians may have possibly visited Wake Island in prehistoric times to harvest fish, but there is nothing toany shape of settlement.

Wake Island as depicted by the United States Exploring Expedition, drawn by Alfred Thomas Agate

Aerial concepts Wake Island, looking westward

The majority of the islands in the area are part of a coral atoll. Coral atolls begin as coral reefs that grow on the slopes of a central volcano. When the volcano sinks back down into the sea, the coral maintain to grow, keeping the reef at or above water level. One exception is Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, which still has the central volcano and coral reefs around it.

The Yap Islands host a number of endemic bird species, including the Yap monarch and the Olive white-eye, in addition to four other restricted-range bird species. The endangered Yap flying-fox, though often considered a subspecies of the Pelew flying fox or the Mariana fruit bat, is also endemic to Yap.

The region has a tropical marine climate moderated by seasonal northeast trade winds. There is little seasonal temperature variation. The dry season runs from December or January to June and the rainy season from July to November or December. Because of the location of some islands, the rainy season can sometimes add typhoons.