Santa Maria (the Azores)

Santa Maria is one of the nine islands of the archipelago of the the Azores. She is located at the south-east of the Archipel, occupies a surface of 97 km ² and its dimensions are approximately 17 km out of 10 km. Santa Maria culminates in Pico Alto to 587 m of altitude.

Morphologiquement, the island is made up in the west of a uniform plate, eroded and stripped whose altitude does not exceed 200 Mr. His oriental party, separated from the preceding one by a mountainous chain (the Serra Verde), is more broken and relatively wooded; this contrast appears by a habitat different, of village-street type in the west and dispersed in the east.

The island is of origin volcanic but its geological history is complex: it is the oldest island of the archipelago of the Azores and she knew several phases of construction and intense erosion since the end of Miocène. She also knew phases of immersion related to important marine invasions. This context explains the presence of some sedimentary formations inserted in subaerial or underwater volcanic formations.

Its volcanicity was probably expressed between 8 and 2 million years and he is regarded as extinct today. The island of Santa Maria is saved intense seismic activity which characterizes its neighbor São Miguel; however she knew some rare earthquakes during her history.

Historically, the island would have been discovered by the Portuguese navigators of the 15th century; however charts portulans mention its existence before one century. It was populated the first among the islands of the archipelago of the Azores, probably between 1430 and 1450. Currently its population is approximately 5400 hearts (figure of 2001).

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