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The Earth wonder the Galapagos Islands are home to beautiful creatures, warm weather, and a nice view of the Pacific Ocean. They are a province of Ecuador and are found on both sides of the equator. The Galapagos is a very nice vacation spot for the many tourists that come to it. The Galapagos Islands are a group of 19 islands. Out of these 19 islands 13 are major and 6 are minor. The Galapagos Islands have formed 3.5 to 5 million years ago and is still constantly changing. The Galapagos will constantly be changing because of the plate movement and volcanic eruptions. This Earth wonder is still young in geological time. It formed by two major Earth processes. One of these processes is the plate tectonics. The Nazca plate and the South America plate converged and this made the Andes Mountains. To make the Andes, a process called subduction happened. Subduction is when the two plates collide and the denser one goes under the less dense one. The less dense one gets pushed up and mountains formed. The magma that was created by the process of subduction created the chain that is known as the Galapagos. The other process that is known for helping making the Galapagos is a hot spot under the islands; which is caused by a mantle plume. A mantle plume is the upwelling of abnormal hot rock in Earth’s mantle. A mantle plume has a lot of heat and changes the land above it. When the crustal plate rides over the hot spot it is hit by the molten rock that is moving upward and causing the plate on top of it to move up; which creates volcanoes. In the last 200 years, there have been more than 50 volcanic eruptions on these many islands. Charles Darwin is one of the most important people who ever visited the islands and his theory of evolution helped humans understand the Galapagos better. In the 1800s, Darwin visited the Galapagos and studied the species on the islands. The species that he took notes on were finches and giant tortoises. The species that live on the islands now are iguanas, giant tortoises, fur seals, sea lions, and 14 different types of birds. All these birds have features from the finches that Darwin studied.  Darwin took interest in the species and wanted the species to grow in population. One of Darwin’s theories came from the idea of when the environment goes through changes the population of the species will reacted to it as well as the species itself changing to be able to live in these environments. This idea turned into a bigger idea of natural selection. From all the information Darwin collected from the islands, he came to the conclusion that species can change over time due to the area around them. Evidence that backed his theory up is the finches and how their beaks grew larger in size. In 1869, Charles Darwin wrote his famous book The Origin of Species. A quote from this book is “One general law, leading to the advancement of all things organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” Galapagos Islands have tons of tourists each year. With the number of tourists that come each year the more problems the islands face. One big issue that is caused by the large number of tourists is illegal fishing and overfishing in the Pacific Ocean. This takes away from and makes the marine ecosystem unbalanced. Some rules are being put in place on the islands to inform visitors how they are hurting the islands. Another issue that the Galapagos is having is littering by visitors. Tourists are coming to the islands and leaving things like trash bags, bottles, cans, etc. on the islands. This is causing pollution to the Pacific Ocean. Another factor that plays into water pollution in the Galapagos is in 2001, an oil tanker spilled 140,000 gallons of oil in the Pacific. This oil still lingers in the Pacific and has left an oily film over the water. Invasive species such as dogs, cats, rats, pigs, and goats are coming to the islands and eating the native islands species food. Also these alien species are bringing stress and diseases to this Earth wonder. The climate in the Galapagos is normally warm because that is the way the ecosystems have to live. The marine and land ecosystems need heat in order to function because without it the living things in them will be in danger. Recently, the islands have been heating up. Global warming is a reason the islands are heating. Global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, which also causes global warming, cause ocean acidification. Ocean acidification makes the marine species on the islands die off. When this happens the marine ecosystem will be negatively affected by this. Another factor of the heating up is in the event of an El Niño. An El Niño is a series of irregular climate changes that cause water to warm. They mostly take place on the equatorial pacific. Since this makes water hot it will kill fish and other marine species. This makes the fish availability low. With all these factors being considered, marine lives such as big coral reefs die off. These climate changes are impacting the islands negatively. Conservation efforts for the Galapagos Islands are the Galapagos Conservancy Organization to help raise funds for all the changes on the islands. Some of the areas the GCO is raising money for is the overuse of the islands natural resources, invasive species, and the diseases brought by these invasive species. Another conservation effort is to get rid of the illegal fishers and put a limit on the legal ones.