Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a country in the Southwest Pacific Ocean. It is made up of a double chain of volcanic islands and coral atolls in Melanesia. The country includes most of the Solomon Islands chain, except for Buka and Bougainville, two islands at the northwestern end that make up the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. The Solomon Islands, once a British protectorate, gained their independence as a republic in 1978. Located on the north coast of Guadalcanal Island, Honiara is the capital and largest city of the Solomon Islands. The Solomon Islands archipelago is part of two different mainland ecoregions. The majority of the islands belong to the Solomon Islands Rainforest Ecoregion, which includes the islands of Bougainville and Buka. The Santa Cruz Islands, together with the neighboring Vanuatu archipelago, form part of the Vanuatu Rainforest Ecoregion. The soil quality varies from extremely rich volcanic soils to fairly infertile limestone. The landscape is dotted with more than 230 species of orchids and other tropical flowers. Mammals are rare on the islands, the only land mammals are bats and small rodents, but birds and reptiles are plentiful. The islands have a number of active and dormant volcanoes, of which Tinakula and Kavachi are the most active. In 2004, a baseline survey of marine biodiversity in the Solomon Islands found 474 coral species in the Solomon Islands, as well as nine species that may be new to science. This makes it the second most diverse coral area in the world, after the Raja Ampat Islands in eastern Indonesia.