The railway system has four unconnected networks in Java and Sumatra primarily dedicated to transport bulk commodities and long-distance passenger traffic.

Indonesia has 21, 579 km of navigable waterways (), of which about one half are on Kalimantan, and a quarter each on Sumatra and Papua.

The volcanic activity stems from Sumatra's location on the Pacific " Ring of Fire "— which is also the reason why Sumatra has had some of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded: in 1833, 2004, 2005 and in the September 2007 Sumatra earthquakes.

Most of Sumatra used to be covered by tropical rainforest, but economic development coupled with corruption and illegal logging has severely threatened its existence.

Originally spoken in Northeast Sumatra, Malay has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for half a millennium.

Apalharpactes, consisting of two species in the Java and Sumatra, has only recently been accepted as a separate genus from Harpactes.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN ), Indonesia has 13 hornbill species: 9 of them exist in Sumatra, and the rest exist in Sumba, Sulawesi, Papua and in Kalimantan has the same hornbill species as in Sumatra, except the Rangkong Papan ( Buceros bicornis ).

It is spoken natively by 40 million people across the Malacca Strait, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and the eastern coast of Sumatra in Indonesia, and has been established as a native language of part of western coastal Sarawak and West Kalimantan in Borneo.

The Malay language originated in Sumatra, where it has its closest relatives such as Minangkabau.

Located on the Musi River banks on the east coast of southern Sumatra island, it has an area of 400. 61 square kilometres and a population of 1, 441, 500.

Since the first of the Musi River has become the economic lifeblood and the city of Palembang in South Sumatra Province.

Because of its inaccessibility, the park has been largely spared from the rampant logging occurring throughout Sumatra and provides one of the last homes for the endangered Sumatran Tiger.

Witnesses could possibly be seeing orangutans ; however: 1 ) this species has long been thought to have died out in all but the northern regions of Sumatra and 2 ) witnesses almost never describe the animal as having orange fur.

More recently the Banded Pitta has been split into three new species, one endemic to Java and Bali, one endemic to Borneo and one found in Sumatra and the Thai-Malay Peninsula.

From Burma it has a continuous distribution ( in suitable habitat ) throughout most of South East Asia, and down into Borneo and Sumatra, as well as on the Andaman Islands.

One researcher has suggested the Javan rhino on Sumatra belonged to a distinct subspecies, R. s.

Mount Galunggung is part of the Sunda Arc extending through Sumatra, Java and Bali, which has resulted from the subduction of the Australian plate beneath the Eurasian plate.

P. p. indicus occurs from Sumatra to Sulawesi and Bali, and has a large shield, black upperparts, and the side of the head is blackish.

Since the early 19th century, large-scale Hadhramaut migration has established sizable Hadhrami minorities all around the Indian Ocean, in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Africa including Hyderabad, Bhatkal, Gangolli, Malabar, Sylhet, Java, Sumatra, Malacca and Singapore.

The poet describes Majapahit as the centre of a huge mandala extending from New Guinea and Maluku to Sumatra and Malay Peninsula.

The islands in the strait and the nearby surrounding regions of Java and Sumatra were devastated by the eruption of Krakatau in 1883, primarily due to intense pumice fall and huge tsunamis caused by the collapse of the volcano.

At 9: 30 A. M., in the village of Peraliya, near Telwatta, the beach was hit by the first of the huge waves thrown up by the earthquake, which had recently struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Thus, the Indian Ocean earthquake of December 26, 2004, with the epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered a series of devastating tsunamis, killing more than 230, 000 people in eleven countries by inundating surrounding coastal communities with huge waves up to 30 meters ( 100 feet ) high.

The wintering range includes southern China, Taiwan, Korea, southern Japan, north-east India, Bangladesh and South-east Asia as far south as the Philippines, Borneo and Sumatra.

Neofelis species range from Nepal and Sikkim eastward to South China and Hainan, southeastward to Burma, Annam, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java and Borneo.

In the south and west, the land rises to the mountain range that runs the length of Sumatra ; the mountains here are dominated by Lake Toba, formed from the caldera of an ancient volcano.

The siamang inhabits the forest remnants of Sumatra Island and the Malay Peninsula, and is widely distributed from lowland forest to montane forest — even a rainforest — and can be found at altitudes of up to 3800 m. The siamang lives in groups of up to six individuals ( four individuals on average ) with an average home range of 23 hectares.

This genus is currently in a state of ongoing study as to its true affinities within the rest of the Molossidae, but as it currently stands, it contains two subgenera, one Australasian containing five species, the other a wide-ranging group with seven species including the western side of South America as far south as northern Chile, Cuba, Sumatra, South Africa and East Africa including Madagascar within its far-flung range.

The collision lifted the Himalayas and most of the Indonesian islands, and created a long arc of highlands and islands, which includes the Arakan Yoma range of Burma, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and the islands off the west coast of Sumatra, including the Banyak Islands and Mentawai Islands.

The most widespread subspecies are the nominate from along the sub-Himalayan range in India and Nepal, melanotis in Peninsular India, spilogaster of Sri Lanka, burmanicus in most of Indochina, ricketti in northern Vietnam and southern China, malayensis of the Thai-Malay Peninsula and northern Sumatra, pallidus from northern Borneo, richmondi from southern Borneo, bido from Java and Bali, batu from southern Sumatra and Batu, hoya from Taiwan, rutherfordi from Hainan, and palawanensis from Palawan.

Their distribution range includes Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Hainan, Indonesia, Sumatra, Borneo, Philippines, Sulawesi and Sumbawa.

The natural geographic range reportedly extends throughout the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo, with unsubstantiated sightings reported in Cambodia.

The Bukit Barisan or the Barisan Mountains are a mountain range on the western side of Sumatra, Indonesia, covering nearly 1, 700 km ( 1, 050 mi ) from the north to the south of the island.

The name Bukit Barisan actually means " row of hills " or " hills that make a row " in Indonesian and Malay, for the range stretches end to end along the island of Sumatra.

The inner arc of Nusa Tenggara is a continuation of the chain of mountains and volcanoes extending from Sumatra through Java, Bali, and Flores, and trailing off in the volcanic Banda Islands, which along with the Kai Islands and the Tanimbar Islands and other small islands in the Banda Sea are typical examples of the Wallacea mixture of Asian and Australasian plant and animal life.

It is an endemic plant that occurs only in the rainforests of Sumatra Island, Indonesia.

In 2011, Lafarge SA will build a cement plant in Langkat, North Sumatra, Indonesia with investment up to Rp. 5 trillion ($ 585 million ).

* English: Blood banana, Seeded red banana, Sumatra ornamental banana, Maroon-variegated banana plant.

Orang Pendek ( Indonesian for " short person ") is the most common name given to a cryptid, or cryptozoological animal, that reportedly inhabits remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra.

One species ( Sumatran Pine ) crosses the equator in Sumatra to 2 ° S.

The Sunda clouded leopard ( Neofelis diardi ) found on Sumatra and Borneo is genetically distinct and considered a separate species since 2006.

It contains approximately 28 species ( including four incompletely characterized species as recognized by Willem Meijer in 1997 ), all found in southeastern Asia, on the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Thailand and the Philippines.

The center of diversity is in subtropical and tropical southeast Asia, while the highest number of species occur in the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and Sumatra.

Along Sumatra, Java, Borneo and the Philippines subspecies hypoleucus ( sometimes considered a full species ) is found while wahgiensis is restricted to New Guinea.

From further examination the print did not match any known primate species and I can conclude that this points towards there being a large unknown primate in the forests of Sumatra.

Junge, after comparing specimens of B. edeni and B. brydei with a 39-ft physically mature specimen that had stranded on Pulu Sugi, an island between Singapore and Sumatra, in July 1936, synonymized the two species into B. edeni ( Anderson, 1878 ).

The Smithornis and Pseudocalyptomena species occur in sub-Saharan Africa ; the rest extend from the eastern Himalayas to Sumatra and Borneo.

In general there are seldom more than three species occurring in the same area, although five species co-occur in the submontane forests of Sumatra.

Neofelis is a genus comprising two extant felid species from Southeast Asia: the clouded leopard ( Neofelis nebulosa ) of mainland Asia, and the Sunda clouded leopard ( Neofelis diardi ) of Sumatra and Borneo.

This species is restricted to wet mountain forests on Sumatra and Java.

* Patersonioideae contains only one genus ( Patersonia ) with about 20 species distributed in Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, and the periphery of Australia.

The dividing line between the two ( sub ) species is taken to be Sumatra, one of the Indonesian islands ; however, intermixing is thought to be inevitable.