Macaronesia
Archipelagos off the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Europe / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Macaronesia (Portuguese: Macaronésia; Spanish: Macaronesia) is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the North Atlantic, off the coasts of Africa and Europe.[1] Each archipelago is made up of a number of Atlantic oceanic islands, which are formed by seamounts on the ocean floor whose peaks have risen above the ocean's surface.[2]
They are grouped politically into four groups- the Azores and Madeira archipelagos are part of Portugal, the Canary Islands are part of Spain, and the Cape Verde islands comprise their own sovereign nation.[3][4][5] Politically, the islands belonging to Portugal and Spain are part of the European Union. Geologically, most of Macaronesia is part of the African tectonic plate. The Azores are located in the triple junction between the Eurasian, North American and African plates.[Note 1][6][7]
In one biogeographical system, the Cape Verde archipelago is in the Afrotropical realm while the other three archipelagos are in the Palearctic realm. According to the European Environment Agency, the three European archipelagos constitute a unique bioregion, known as the Macaronesian Biogeographic Region.[8] The World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions places the whole of Macaronesia in its botanical continent of Africa.[9]
In 2022, Macaronesia had an estimated combined population of 3,222,054 people; 2,172,944 (67%) in the Canary Islands, 561,901 (17%) in Cape Verde, 250,769 (8%) in Madeira and 236,440 (7%) in the Azores.[10][11][12]