Solomon Archipelago

Solomon Archipelago

Aerial view of islands in Solomon Archipelago
The Solomon Islands archipelago
Geography
Location	Pacific Ocean
Coordinates	9°28′S 159°49′E / 9.467°S 159.817°E / -9.467; 159.817
Archipelago	Solomon Islands archipelago
Total islands	6 main islands and more than 986 smaller islands
Major islands	Bougainville, Choiseul, the New Georgia Islands, Santa Isabel, Malaita, Makira (San Cristobal), Guadalcanal.
Administration
Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea

The Solomon Archipelago is a terrestrial ecoregion and marine ecoregion in the Pacific Ocean. It includes the tropical ocean waters surrounding most of the Solomon Islands archipelago (excluding the Santa Cruz Islands, which is a part of the Vanuatu marine ecoregion with the forests being part of the Vanuatu rain forests ecoregion), and includes Bougainville Island and Buka Island of Papua New Guinea and their surrounding waters.

Bougainville is the largest island in the archipelago, while it is geographically part of the Solomon Archipelago, it is politically an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea.

The Solomon Islands rain forests form part of the East Melanesian Islands ecoregion, also known as the Solomons-Vanuatu-Bismarck moist forests, which is a biogeographic region in the Melanesia subregion of Oceania.^[1]