Indonesia is an archipelagic country located in Southeast Asia, lying between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It is located in a strategic location astride or along major sea lanes connecting East Asia, South Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world. Indonesia's various regional cultures have been shaped—although not specifically determined—by centuries of complex interactions with its physical environment.
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, known as West Timor, constitutes part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara. Within West Timor lies an exclave of East Timor called Oecusse District. The island covers an area of 30,777 square kilometres. The name is a variant of timur, Malay for "east"; it is so called because it lies at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Mainland Australia is less than 500 km away, separated by the Timor Sea.
The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located east of Sulawesi, west of New Guinea, and north and east of Timor. Lying within Wallacea, the Maluku Islands have been considered as a geographical and cultural intersection of Asia and Oceania.
Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of mainly Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Halmahera, Buru, Seram, and many smaller islands. The islands of Wallacea lie between the Sunda Shelf to the west, and the Sahul Shelf including Australia and New Guinea to the south and east. The total land area of Wallacea is 347,000 km2 (134,000 sq mi).
The Banda Sea is one of four seas that surround the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, connected to the Pacific Ocean, but surrounded by hundreds of islands, including Timor, as well as the Halmahera and Ceram Seas. It is about 1000 km (600 mi) east to west, and about 500 km (300 mi) north to south.
Maluku is a province of Indonesia. It comprises the central and southern regions of the Maluku Islands. The main city and capital of Maluku province is Ambon on the small Ambon Island. The land area is 46,150.92 km2, and the total population of this province at the 2010 census was 1,533,506 people, rising to 1,848,923 at the 2020 census. The official estimate as at mid 2022 was 1,881,727. Maluku is located in Eastern Indonesia. It is directly adjacent to North Maluku, Southwest Papua, and West Papua in the north, Central Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi in the west, Banda Sea, East Timor and East Nusa Tenggara in the south and Arafura Sea, Central Papua and South Papua in the east.
Geologically, the Sunda Shelf is a south-eastern extension of the continental shelf of Mainland Southeast Asia. Major landmasses on the shelf include the Bali, Borneo, Java, Madura, and Sumatra, as well as their surrounding smaller islands. It covers an area of approximately 1.85 million km2. Sea depths over the shelf rarely exceed 50 metres and extensive areas are less than 20 metres resulting in strong bottom friction and strong tidal friction. Steep undersea gradients separate the Sunda Shelf from the Philippines, Sulawesi, and the Lesser Sunda Islands.
Wetar is a tropical island which belongs to the Indonesian province of Maluku and is the largest island of the Maluku Barat Daya Islands of the Maluku Islands. It lies east of the Lesser Sunda Islands, which include nearby Alor and Timor, but it is politically part of the Maluku Islands. To the south, across the Wetar Strait, lies the island of Timor; at its closest it is 50 km away. To the west, across the Ombai Strait, lies the island of Alor. To the southwest is the very small island of Liran, which is also part of Wetar district (kecamatan) and, further southwest, the small East Timorese island of Atauro. To the north is the Banda Sea and to the east lie Romang and Damar Islands, while to the southeast lie the other principal islands of the Barat Daya Islands. Including Liran, Wetar has an area of 2,651.9 km2, and had a population of 7,916 at the 2010 Census.
Kisar, also known as Yotowawa, is a small island in the Southwestern Moluccas in Indonesia, located to the northeast of Timor Island. Most of the island is included within the Southernmost Islands District within the Southwest Islands Regency of Maluku Province. The District previously also includes the larger Romang Island further north, but this with its own outliers was subsequently split off to form its own district. The rest of the island forms the North Kisar District within the regency. It is one of the 92 officially listed outlying islands of Indonesia. The principal town is Wonreli, with 6,652 inhabitants at the 2010 Census.
The Letti Islands of Indonesia are part of the Maluku Islands, in southwest Maluku Province. They are also called the "Lemola" Archipelago, from the initial two letters of each of the three main islands, Letti, Moa and Lakor; each of the three islands now constitutes a separate administrative district (kecamatan) within the Maluku Barat Daya Regency
Romang is an island, part of Barat Daya Islands in Indonesia, located at 7.5833333°S 127.4333333°E, east of Wetar Island. Alternate names in use are Roma, Romonu and Fataluku. It is included within the Terselatan Islands District within the Barat Daya Islands Regency of the Maluku Province; the District also includes the smaller Kisar Island further south.
The Timoric languages are a group of Austronesian languages spoken on the islands of Timor, neighboring Wetar, and Southwest Maluku to the east.
The Banda Sea Islands moist deciduous forests is a tropical moist forest ecoregion in Indonesia. The ecoregion includes several island groups in the southwestern Banda Sea, including the Tanimbar Islands, Kai Islands, and the Barat Daya Islands except for Wetar.
Southwest Maluku Regency is a regency of Maluku Province, Indonesia. It comprises a number of islands and island groups in the south of the province, including Lirang Island, Wetar Island, Kisar Island, Romang Island, the Letti Islands, the Damer Islands, Mdona Hyera and the Babar Islands. The administrative centre lies at Tiakur on Moa Island, but the largest town is Wonreli.
The Banda Arc is a dual chain of islands in eastern Indonesia. It is the result of the collision of a continent and an intra-oceanic island arc. The presently active volcanic arc is mounted on stretched continental and oceanic crust whereas the associated subduction trench is underlain by continental crust, which has subducted deep enough to contaminate the volcanic arc with continental melts. The convergence of the Indo-Australian plates and Eurasia resulted in the formation of the Sunda and Banda island arcs. The transitional zone between the arcs is located south of Flores Island and is characterized by the change in the tectonic regime along the boundary. in the Timor Region.
Damer, or Damar, is a small volcanic island in the Barat Daya Islands group in Indonesia's Maluku province, on the southern side of the Banda Sea. It is flanked by four smaller islands - one to the east, one to the west and two to the south. Together they are called the Damar Islands, and constitute one administrative district within the Maluku Barat Daya Regency. The district has a land area of 392.29 km2 and had a population of 5,718 at the 2020 Census.
The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up the Sunda Islands. The islands are part of a volcanic arc, the Sunda Arc, formed by subduction along the Sunda Trench in the Java Sea. A bit more than 20 million people live on the islands. Etymologically, Nusa Tenggara means "Southeast Islands" from the words of nusa which means 'island' from Old Javanese language and tenggara means 'southeast'.
