Classifying Pacific islands

Geoscience Letters

Official Journal of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS)

Table 1 Summary of key data in island database

Country/group of islands	Number of islands	Total area of islands (km²)	Average island area (km²)	Average island maximum elevation (m)
American Samoa	7	222	32	396
Chilean islands (eastern Pacific)	2	215	108	269
Cook Islands	15	297	20	73
East Pacific outliers^a	24	8236	343	509
Federated States of Micronesia	127	799	6	45
Fiji	211	20,857	99	134
French Polynesia	125	3939	31	154
Guam	1	588	588	400
Hawaii	16	19,121	1195	869
Kiribati	33	995	30^b	6
Marshall Islands	34	286	8^b	3
Nauru	1	23	23	71
New Caledonia	29	21,613	745	121
Niue	1	298	298	60
Northern Mariana islands	16	537	34	444
Palau	33	495	15	58
Papua New Guinea^c	437	67,754	155	135
Pitcairn islands	4	54	13	97
Samoa	7	3046	435	504
Solomon Islands	415	29,675	72	88
Tokelau	3	16	5^b	5
Tonga	124	847	7	56
Tuvalu	10	44	4^b	4
US-administered islands (central Pacific)	8	37	5	5
Vanuatu	81	13,526	167	330
Wallis and Futuna	14	190	14	94
Total	1778	1,93,712	171	190

Note that the island of New Guinea is excluded from the data analysis in this table because of its great size which skews the analysis
^aThis group is comprised mostly of the Galapagos islands, politically part of Ecuador
^bAverage island areas for these atoll countries are overestimates as they are based on polygons that subsume multiple islands (see text)
^cNote that the large island of New Guinea is excluded from this analysis because it is shared between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia