珊瑚礁和珊瑚环礁只是不同类型的火山岛吗?当我听到“火山岛”这个词时,我想到的是莫雷阿岛(Moorea)或夏威夷等地,但归根结底,珊瑚礁和珊瑚环礁是在火山的残余物上建立基础的,对吗?< / p >
不,不一定是火山。
这两个术语,以及许多其他术语,如边缘礁和堡礁,只是形态学上的-与形状有关。它们往往不暗示任何与基因有关的东西——与起源有关。(描述和解释的分离是地球科学等观测科学中的一个重要原则)
Cay 低岛:通常由沙或珊瑚构成的低岛参见维基词典。< / > < / p > < /李> <李> < p > < >强环礁< / >强劲,环状珊瑚礁参见《牛津英语词典》。
Cay有时更广泛地用于一个岛屿或一组岛屿。在某些情况下,如Cay Sal Bank,巴哈马群岛,该特征实际上是一个环礁:一个环形礁。萨尔礁是世界上最大的环礁之一,不是在火山上形成的。
Charles Darwin hypothesized in his monograph The structure and distribution of coral reefs that atolls form when a fringing reef around a volcanic islands grows as the volcano subsides:
Indeed, Darwin turned out to be correct that atolls often have a volcanic origin, but Cay Sal Bank is a counter-example. I think it's fair to say that most people would assume that origin though, and lots of Internet definitions , so it's notable if an atoll formed some other way, e.g. on a non-volcanic seamount (see Keating et al., 1987, in Seamounts, Islands, and Atolls, AGU), or by island subsidence due to dissolution.