Islands are sub-continental landforms that are surrounded by water.
Quotes
Fast-anchor'd isle.
William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book II. The Timepiece, line 151.
Some regions are likely to be especially affected by climate change.The Arctic, because of the impacts of high rates of projected warming on natural systems and human communities; Africa, because of low adaptive capacity and projected climate change impacts, Small islands, where there is high exposure of population and infrastructure to projected climate change impacts Asian and African megadeltas, due to large populations and high exposure to sea level rise, storm surges, and river flooding. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report concludes that non-climate stresses can increase vulnerability to climate change by reducing resilience and can also reduce adaptive capacity because of resource deployment towards competing needs. Vulnerable regions face multiple stresses that affect their exposure and sensitivity to various impacts as well as their capacity to adapt. These stresses arise from, for example, current climate hazards, poverty, and unequal access to resources, food insecurity, trends in economic globalization, conflict, and incidence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
Island of bliss! amid the subject Seas, That thunder round thy rocky coasts, set up, At once the wonder, terror, and delight Of distant nations; whose remotest shore Can soon be shaken by thy naval arm; Not to be shook thyself, but all assaults Baffling, like thy hoar cliffs the loud sea-wave.
James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 1,597.
Sprinkled along the waste of years Full many a soft green isle appears: Pause where we may upon the desert road, Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.
John Keble, The Christian Year, The First Sunday in Advent, Stanza 8.
Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony.
Sark, fairer than aught in the world that the lit skies cover, Laughs inly behind her cliffs, and the seafarers mark As a shrine where the sunlight serves, though the blown clouds hover, Sark.