Southeast Asia Physical Patterns

FIGURE 10.5 Sundaland 18,000 years ago, at the height of the last ice age.

Landforms

Southeast Asia is a region of peninsulas and islands. Most of that space is ocean; the area of all the region’s landmass amounts to less than half that of the contiguous United States.

Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam occupy the large Indochina peninsula that extends south of China.

The archipelago (a series of large and small islands) that fans out to the south and east of the mainland is grouped into the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Timor-Leste (East Timor), and the Philippines.

The irregular shapes and landforms of the Southeast Asian mainland and archipelago are the result of the same tectonic forces that were unleashed when India split off from the African Plate and gradually collided with Eurasia.

There are also volcanoes and earthquakes in the Philippines, where the Philippine Plate pushes against the eastern edge of the Eurasian Plate and is in turn pushed by the Pacific Plate. The volcanoes of Southeast Asia are considered part of the Pacific Ring of Fire

Citation

World Regional Geography without Subregions

6th Edition.