Islands Over 250,000 Km2 (97,000 Sq Mi)
Traditionally, landmasses completely or mostly surrounded by water are classified as continents (when they are large enough) or islands. According to this classification, mainland Australia (7.6 million km2) is the smallest continent and Greenland (2.1 million km2) is the largest island. Thus the list of islands begins with Greenland.
| Rank | Island’s name | Area (km2) |
Area (sq mi) |
Country or countries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greenland* | 2,130,800 | 822,706 | Greenland, constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark |
| 2 | New Guinea | 785,753 | 303,381 | Indonesia (Papua and West Papua) and Papua New Guinea |
| 3 | Borneo | 748,168 | 288,869 | Brunei, Indonesia (Central, East, South and West Kalimantan) and Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak) |
| 4 | Madagascar | 587,713 | 226,917 | Madagascar |
| 5 | Baffin Island | 507,451 | 195,928 | Canada (Nunavut) |
| 6 | Sumatra | 443,066 | 171,069 | Indonesia (Aceh, Bengkulu, Jambi, Lampung, Riau and North, South and West Sumatra) |
* It is thought that beneath the ice sheet Greenland may be three separate islands. Whether the places where the ice-bedrock boundary reaches below the sea level are land or sea is a matter of definition. The usual definition is that Greenland is one major island.
Read more about this topic: List Of Islands By Area
Famous quotes containing the word islands:
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)