Cuba

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. The country comprises an archipelago of about 1,600 islands, islets, and cays with a combined area three-fourths as large as the U.S. state of Florida. The islands form an important segment of the Antilles island chain, which continues east and then south in a great arc enclosing the Caribbean Sea.

Cuba lies in the tropics. Because it is located on the southwestern periphery of the North Atlantic high atmospheric pressure zone, its climate is influenced by the northeast trade winds in winter and by east-northeast winds in summer. The warm currents that form the Gulf Stream have a moderating influence along the coasts. Cuba’s lush tropical plant life includes thousands of flowering plant species, half of which may be endemic to the archipelago. Much of the original vegetation has been replaced by sugarcane, coffee, and rice plantations, made possible by the wide-scale and indiscriminate destruction of forests.