WoI - World Of Indonesia

Indonesia is an archipelagic country extending 5,120 kilometers from east to west and 1,760 kilometers from north to south. It encompasses and estimated 17,508 islands, only 6,000 of which are inhabited. It comprises five main islands; Sumatra, Java, Borneo (known as "Kalimantan" in Indonesia), Sulawesi, and New Guinea; two major archipelagos (Nusa Tenggara and the Maluku Islands); and sixty smaller archipelagos. Four of the islands are shared with other nations; Borneo is shared with Malaysia and Brunei, Sebatik, located eastern coast of Kalimantan, shared with Malaysia, Timor is shared with East Timor, and the newly divided provinces of Papua and West Papua share the island of New Guinea with Papua New Guinea. Indonesia's total land area is 1,919,317 square kilometers. Included in Indonesia's total territory is another 93,000 square kilometers of inlands seas (straits, bays, and other bodies of water). The additional surrounding sea areas bring Indonesia's generally recognized territory (land and sea) to about 5 million square kilometers. The government, however, also claims an exclusive economic zone, which brings the total to about 7.9 million square kilometers.

Geographers have conventionally grouped Sumatra, Java (and Madura), Kalimantan (in Borneo island), and Sulawesi in the Greater Sunda Islands. These islands, except for Sulawesi, lie on the Sunda Shelf—an extension of the Malay Peninsula and the Southeast Asian mainland. At Indonesia's eastern extremity is Papua, which takes up the western half of the world's second largest island--New Guinea--on the Sahul Shelf. Sea depths in the Sunda and Sahul shelves average 200 meters or less. Between these two shelves lie Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara (also known as the Lesser Sunda Islands), and the Maluku Islands (or the Moluccas), which form a second island group where the surrounding seas in some places reach 4,500 meters in depth. The term Outer Islands is used inconsistently by various writers but it is usually taken to mean those islands other than Java and Madura. (source)