Comoros - Terrestrial Ecosystems and Cultural Landscape of the Comoros Archipelago

The Comoros archipelago is an eminently representative example of the ongoing geological processes. Its volcanic origin and its age (between -3.5 and -2 million years depending on the islands) make it one of the most recent emerging land of our planet. Its spatial arrangement allows to consider it as a particular illustration of the theory of "hot spots" (line of progression from the volcanoes of the N-W of Madagascar and Nossi-Bé, with rotation of the plates). What is also the originality of the Comoros is to be able, over a horizontal distance of about fifteen kilometers, to present a complete staging of natural environments of exceptional diversity, ranging from abyssal depths of -3,000 m to mountain peaks from 2360 m. Such a situation is exceptional in the Indian Ocean and rare in the world.