Macaronesia

Macaronesia is a group of four volcanic archipelagos in the North Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of North Africa and Europe. These island groups are made from underwater mountains, called seamounts, whose tops rose above the sea. The four archipelagos are the Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, and Cape Verde.

Each archipelago has its own political status. The Azores and Madeira belong to Portugal as autonomous regions. The Canary Islands are part of Spain. Cape Verde is an independent country and a member of the United Nations. The islands that belong to Portugal and Spain are also part of the European Union, while Cape Verde belongs to the African Union.

In 2022, about 3.2 million people lived in Macaronesia. Most lived in the Canary Islands, with many others in Cape Verde, Madeira, and the Azores. Geologically, Macaronesia sits mostly on the African tectonic plate, with the Azores sitting where three tectonic plates meet.

Etymology

The name Macaronesia was first used by ancient Greek mapmakers to describe islands west of the Strait of Gibraltar. It comes from Greek words that mean "islands of the fortunate". People stopped using this name for a long time, but it was brought back in 1917 to mean what we understand today.

Sometimes, people misspell the name as "Macronesia" by comparing it to Micronesia, a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean that has a different origin.

Archipelagos

Further information: List of islands in Macaronesia

Macaronesia has four main archipelagos. They are:

• Azores: an autonomous region of Portugal
• Canary Islands: an autonomous community of Spain
• Cape Verde: a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations
• Madeira (including the Savage Islands): an autonomous region of Portugal

Geography and geology

The islands of Macaronesia are volcanic and are thought to come from hot spots deep in the Earth. Because of where they are located and their different heights, these islands have many kinds of weather. You can find oceanic weather, Mediterranean weather, and humid subtropical weather in the Azores. In Madeira, the weather is more like a tropical savanna. The Canary Islands have dry and semi-desert climates, while Cape Verde has a tropical climate.

Some places on these islands have different weather because of the rain shadow effect. The special laurisilva forests are mountain cloud forests that have plants which used to grow in the Mediterranean Basin when it was wetter. Many of these plants only grow here and have learned to live in the changing weather of the islands.

Macaronesia has animals and plants found nowhere else in the world. For example, there is a type of jumping spider called Macaroeris that lives here. Since none of these islands were ever part of a big landmass, all the plants and animals got there by traveling long distances. Laurel-leaved forests, known as laurisilva, once covered much of the Azores, Madeira, and parts of the Canaries. These forests look like the ancient ones that grew around the Mediterranean Basin and northwestern Africa before the ice ages. Trees like Apollonias, Clethra, Dracaena, Ocotea, Persea, and Picconia that grow in these forests were also found around the Mediterranean long ago.

Conservation issues

A lot of the plants that naturally grew on these islands have been removed because people cut down trees for wood, cleared land for farming and animals, and brought in plants and animals that did not belong there. This has made many special animals and plants on the islands in danger of disappearing.

One big problem is that people brought cats to the islands. Many of these cats live wild and eat other animals. Even though they mostly eat animals that were also brought to the islands, there are so many cats that they also hurt the special birds and reptiles that belong only to these islands.

Since 2001, rules from the European Union have helped protect large areas of land and water in the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands. This protection covers an area of about 5,000 km².