Satellite Eye for Galathea 3

Tikopia 10th July 2006.

Tikopia is the southernmost island of the Solomon Islands group. The island is around 4 km long and the highest point is 381 meter above sea level. The image clearly shows that the island consists of the remains of a volcano with a crater that now has connection to the sea. Around 1.200 inhabitants live in different villages that are seen as white areas in the satellite image. Cultivated area in form of for instance gardening is found scattered across the island. The gardens can be difficult to localize in the image.

Tikopia was hit by the tropical hurricane Zoe in December 2002 and very much damage was caused to vegetation and villages. Surprisingly, all people survived the catastrophe despite the very severe destructions.

Technical information:

The image is from the 10th July 2006. The Quickbird satellite has a spatial resolution of 2.4 m * 2.4 m in red, green, blue and near-infrared channels and a spatial resolution of 0.6 m * 0.6 m in panchromatic (black/white). Here is selected a combination of channels and color bands that result in an image in true (natural) color.

The satellite image is placed at disposal of the land-based project ’Climate, livelihoods and production in the SW-Pacific’, CLIP, Institute of Geography, University of Copenhagen. In the CLIP project an investigation of the three islands, Bellona, Ontong Java and Tikopia, is done in order to achieve an integrated understanding of the survival of the societies on the tropical islands in the ’modern world’.