Located
in Oceania, the Kingdom of Tonga is a series of islands located in the Southern
Pacific Ocean. Tonga is just west of the Indo-Australian Tongan Trench. Because
of this geographic location, Tonga is the home to an abundance of seismic
activity, and many of their geographic formations are rather new, in terms of
geography. There are two types of islands in Tonga, one type is a limestone
island with a coral base, and the other is still limestone, but instead of
coral it has a volcanic base. De to this seismic activity, these islands is
covered with limestone cliffs, rock gardens, caves, trenches, and other
crevices that were all naturally formed.
The Kingdom of Tonga is home to a tropical climate, with
temperature averaging in the mid-eighties all year. This region also
experiences a lot of rainfall. In a given year the residents of Tonga can
expect, on average, about 65 to 120 inches of rain each year. This coupled with
the warm temperatures gives Tonga a very high average level of humidity of
about 80%.
Though
there are many islands that make up the Kingdom of Tonga, they can all be
sorted into two categories. First we look at the western islands, which are the
islands with the volcanic base. These islands were formed by materials that
heat up and rise to the oceans surface, which overtime forms an island. These
islands are consisted largely or bright red clay like soil that is not overly
fertile. The next set of islands is the eastern islands. These islands are
nonvolcanic. These islands are surrounded by barrier reefs, which supply the
people with an abundance of resources and minerals, as well as very fertile land
and soil for agricultural purposes. The eastern islands are where most early settlers
made their homes due to the resources available to them.
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