The following is excerped from the Country Studies--Area Handbook program of the U.S. Department of the Army. The original version of this text is available at the Library of Congress.
Full index of Country Studies-Madagascar
Madagascar
COUNTRY
Formal Name: Republic of Madagascar.
Short Name: Madagascar.
Term for Citizens: Malagasy.
Capital: Antananarivo.
Date of Independence: June 26, 1960.
GEOGRAPHY
Size: 587,040 square kilometers.
Topography: East coast has lowlands leading to
steep
bluffs and central highlands; Tsaratanana Massif in north
with
volcanic mountains; west coast with many protected harbors
and
broad plains; and southwest with plateau and desert
region.
Climate: Two seasons: hot, rainy from November
to
April; cooler, dry season from May to October;
southeastern trade
winds dominate; occasional cyclones.
Data as of August 1994
This is excerped from the Country Studies--Area Handbook program of the U.S. Department of the Army. The original version of this text is available at the Library of Congress.
Full index of Country Studies-Madagascar
Almost all pictures on this site were taken with a Konica Minolta
Recent articles
Madagascar fires mapped with Google Earth in real-time Every year as much as one-third of Madagascar, one of the planet's most biodiverse islands, goes up in flames. Now a new tool gives scientists the ability to monitor and track Madagascar's fires in real-time through the Internet.
UNESCO lists rainforest parks of Madagascar as Heritage sites (7/2/2007) UNESCO has listed six rainforest parks in Madagascar as World Heritage sites. The announcement comes as the Indian Ocean island nation has moved aggressively to protect its biologically-rich forests from further degradation.
Conservation is saving lemurs and helping people in Madagascar (5/7/2007) Madagascar, an island nation that lies off the coast of southeastern Africa, has long been famous for its unique and diverse species of wildlife, especially lemurs--primates found nowhere else on the planet. In recent years, the island country has also become world-renowned for conservation efforts that are succeeding in spite of extraordinary pressures from a poor population that relies heavily on forest burning for basic subsistence. A large part of this success is due to the early efforts of Patricia Wright, a primatologist who has been working in the country for more than 20 years. Wright led the effort to launch the country's leading protected area and helped Madagascar become a leading global example of conservation despite its economic adversity.
