Solomon Islands (ecoregion)
Aerial view of islands in the Solomon Islands (archipelago) | |
The Solomon Islands (archipelago) | |
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Pacific Ocean |
| Coordinates | 9°28′S 159°49′E / 9.467°S 159.817°E |
| Archipelago | Solomon Islands (archipelago) |
| Total islands | Six main islands and more than 986 smaller islands |
| Major islands | Bougainville, Choiseul, the New Georgia Islands, Santa Isabel, Malaita, Makira (San Cristobal), Guadalcanal. |
| Administration | |
The Solomon Islands (archipelago) covers a marine and terrestrial ecoregion (sometimes referred to as the Solomon Archipelago) in the Pacific Ocean. It includes the tropical ocean waters surrounding most of the archipelago (excluding the Santa Cruz Islands, which is a part of the Vanuatu marine ecoregion with the forests being part of the Vanuatu rain forests ecoregion), and includes Bougainville Island and Buka Island of Papua New Guinea and their surrounding waters.
Bougainville is the largest island in the archipelago, while it is geographically part of the Solomon Archipelago, it is politically an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea.
The Solomon Islands rain forests form part of the East Melanesian Islands ecoregion, also known as the Solomons-Vanuatu-Bismarck moist forests, which is a biogeographic region in the Melanesia subregion of Oceania.