![]() Merapi erupted in 1994, killing 37 and forcing 6,000 to evacuate the area. Semeru, in the eastern part of the island, is the highest active volcano on Java (12,131 ft or 3,676 m) and erupted most recently in April 2004. ![]() Most of the high peaks are concentrated along the southern edge of the island, about 20 of which exceed 8,000 ft (2,424 m). There are more than 100 volcanoes, 13 active in recent history. ![]() Part of the Pacific RING OF FIRE, Java was formed from a series of volcanoes running west to east. ![]() The rest of the island is surrounded by shallower seas, on the west, the Sunda Strait, with the island of Sumatra only 16 mi (26 km) distant on the north, the Java Sea and on the east, the Bali Strait, separating Java from Bali by only 1 mi (1.6 km) at its narrowest. The island is bordered on the south by the INDIAN OCEAN, which drops relatively quickly to great depths, plummeting up to 24,440 ft (7,450 m) in the Java Trench, the deepest point in the Indian Ocean. It is the smallest of the Greater Sundas (which also include BORNEO, SUMATRA, and Sulawesi), with a total area of 48,830 square mi (125,205 square km). The 13th-largest island in the world, Java is the fifth-largest island in the Malay Archipelago. But the future may change this status, as mineral and fossil fuel wealth in the outer islands leads to increased migration away from Java and increased demands for political and economic autonomy. Java is not the largest of the islands of INDONESIA, but it is certainly the nation's political, historical, and economic core, with 60 percent of Indonesia's total population, and most of its wealth concentrated into less than 7 percent of the nation's total land area. WITH A population exceeding 120 million, crowded into a space about the size of NEW YORK state (but with nearly six times the population), the island of Java is one of the most densely populated places on Earth (2,070 inhabitants per square mi or 864 per square km).
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