Geology of the Bahamas

This chapter provides information on the geology of Bahamas, and mentions that the geology of the Turks and Caicos is also similar. The Bahamian archipelago covers 300,000 km 2 , of which 136,000 km 2 is shallow bank, and 11,400 km 2 is subaerial land. The Commonwealth of the Bahamas comprises the majority of an extensive archipelago of carbonate islands and shallow banks in the western North Atlantic Ocean. The southeastern portion of the same archipelago consists of the Turks and Caicos Islands (British West Indies), and the submerged Mouchoir, Silver, and Navidad banks. Climatically, the Bahamas' temperature ranges from subtropical in the north to semiarid in the south. Today, the northern islands are largely covered by pine barrens with palmetto, but there are regions of limited broadleaf coppice. The Bahamas lie within the zone of the northeast trade winds, and that has resulted in the preferential occurrence of islands on the eastern (windward) side of most banks. As a result of the glacioeustatic control of limestone deposition in the Bahamas, the lithostratigraphic units of Bahamian islands are also allostratigraphic units that are usually bounded by terra rossa paleosols.