Caribbean Islands and Their Geography

The Caribbean region comprises more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays, conventionally divided into the Greater Antilles — Cuba, Hispaniola (shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica, and Puerto Rico — and the Lesser Antilles, a long arc of smaller islands running from the Virgin Islands south to Trinidad, itself subdivided into the Leeward Islands (including Antigua, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, and Guadeloupe) and the Windward Islands (including Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Grenada). Cuba, at roughly 110,860 square kilometers, is by far the largest island, followed by Hispaniola at approximately 76,000 square kilometers, split roughly two-fifths Haiti and three-fifths Dominican Republic. The region sits at the boundary of the Caribbean Plate, whose interaction with the North American, South American, and Cocos plates produces both the volcanic islands of the Lesser Antilles' inner arc — including Montserrat's Soufrière Hills, whose eruptions beginning in 1995 buried the capital, Plymouth, and forced the evacuation of roughly two-thirds of the island's population — and the significant seismic hazard responsible for events such as the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake (magnitude 7.0), which killed an estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people according to Haitian government figures, among the deadliest earthquakes in recorded history.