Islands within the scope of Island territories: Establishing limits for constructing a typology to classify the islands of Macaronesia

Abstract

The Earth’s surface has a vast number of island territories that vary greatly in size, to the point of complicating the process of creating categories for different land areas. This article explores the proposal put forward by Depraetere and Dahl (2007; 2018) for delimiting island areas and, mainly, to arrive at a concept of islands and their categories, in order to subsequently apply this typology to the island units of Macaronesia. In this context, it is essential to determine the limits for the islet and mainland given that the concept of the island is precisely framed by these two types of island spaces. The primary objective is to discuss the concept of the island, mainly from the perspective of the size of the territories.  We also set out to explain the main reasons why certain islands are not suited to human occupation. In order to achieve these objectives, we opted for a type of methodology that favoured a literature review, adapting a model for classifying reference island areas and the processing of information from statistical sources. In terms of the results, it is worth highlighting the fact that we have kept the original proposal of 10 km² as the starting point for an island territory to be considered an island. This decision allowed for 31 islands to be counted in the entire Atlantic region of Macaronesia, three of which are currently uninhabited. This type of classification does not alter the number of islands commonly recognised in the Azores and Cape Verde, although the same is not true for others. The average size of the island units varies from archipelago to archipelago and the size of the territory, while important, is never the decisive circumstance for settlement.