Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 43 Mount Inerie on the Indonesian island of Flores is typical of the volcanic land-
scape throughout the Lesser Sunda Islands. Active and inactive volcanoes and cinder cones
are everywhere, dotting the archipelago as if some race of gigantic moles has been at work.
dif erent directions. All this activity helped to create the lesser Sunda chain
of islands that stretches to the west of New Guinea, including Timor, Flores,
and Sumbawa. At present the entire region between the Australasian and
Southeast Asian plates has dissolved into geological anarchy. It is studded
with seventy-six active volcanoes and shaken by hundreds of substantial
earthquakes each year.
Some of the most complicated of these plate collisions formed the con-
torted island of Sulawesi that we explored in Chapter 1. The other greater
Sunda islands of Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, however, are not part of the
Australasian plate. Instead they are upthrusted regions of the southeastern-
most part of the Eurasian plate, pushed up by the tectonic collisions taking
place to their south. These giant islands, surrounded by an expanse of shal-
low seafl oor known as the Sunda Shelf, share their geological and biological
history with the great peninsula of Southeast Asia.
At the present time the Eurasian plate and the Australasian plate have
not quite met. They are still separated by a complex of smaller plates. An
 
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