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Mauritius Geography
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Mauritius is located in the Indian Ocean on latitude 20°17′S and longitude 57°33′E.
The volcanic island is approximately 855km away from the east coast of Madagascar and is surrounded with about 330km of coast which is protected almost everywhere by coral reefs.
The volcanic island is approximately 855km away from the east coast of Madagascar and is some 61 km in length and about 46km wide making a total land area of some 1,865 square kilometers. |
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The Mauritian territory also incorporates the island of Rodrigues, which is some 600 kilometers to the east, and has a land area of 119 square kilometers. There are two tiny dependencies to the north of Mauritius namely, the Agalega Islands and the Cargados Carajos Shoals.
Mauritius together with Rodigues and Reunion island form parts of the Mascarene. The islands are perched on submarine ridges, including the Mascarene Plateau that runs for some 3,000 kilometers in an arc bowed outward from the African mainland, and the Rodrigues Fracture Zone that ripples eastward and connects this underwater plateau with the massive Mid-Indian Ridge. |
Trou aux Cerfs is one of the most well-defined and impressive volcanic structures of the island. It presents a perfect circular depression reaching a diameter of 350 metres at the surface. The crater is about 80 metres deep and its base, which is around 180 metres in diameter, remains marshy all year round but it has been a dormant volcano for more than 100,000 years. |
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The island consists of a broken ring of mountain ranges, some 600 to 800 meters above sea level, encircling a central tableland that slopes from a level of 300 meters in the north to 600 meters in the southwest.
The range of mountains forms a ring ellaborating the fact that they once used to be part of one big volcano and they are surrounded by low-lying, sometimes hilly, coastal plains with the exception in the southwest where the drop-off is precipitous.
The highest mount in Mauritius is Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire which has a height of eight hundred and twenty eight metres, then there is Pieter Both with a height of eight hundred and twenty three metres and Le Pouce which is eight hundred and twelve metres high. |
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