Kingman Reef US - A Reef, An EEZ and $90,000 Wasted Money Caused by Inaccurate Mapping
Kingman Reef US
Kingman Reef is a US Minor Island Possession. Reefs are curious structures. If they qualify as above water islands, they enable a country to control a 200-NM Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and that is alot of potential resources to control. If the reef is a below-water, it is merely a hazard to navigation and an interesting spot for scientists and surfers. Kingman has a small strip of cobbled land that rises 1-meter above sea level. During any sort of stormy conditions, Kingman Reef is below water or, at best, a reef awash. However, during calm weather, Kingman Reef supports a sliver of an island making it EEZ elgible.
In 1983, President Ronald Regan declared Kingman Reef and Palmyra Island an EEZ of the United States. As stated above, EEZs represent potential riches for the country controlling them. The last image in the above pictobrowser shows the results of a USGS project to catalog the EEZs of the United States using GLORIA sidescan-sonar imagery. It shows the sea floor in the area of Kingman and Palmyra. All of this area is controlled by the United States. We are not alone in our quest to control underwater real estate. All nations with access to a shoreline are in the EEZ business. Even if they don't work the real estate, others will pay them dearly to mutually benefit.
Finally a comment about my image that compares a World Vector Shoreline (WVS) and my own Enhanced Vector Shoreline (EVS) of Kingman Reef. One of us is off, way off! And it isn't me! The WVS shows a reef that is about 28-miles N/S by 60-miles E/W. My EVS depiction of Kingman Reef shows it to be 5.5-miles N/S by 9-miles E/W. My product was created using Landsat ETM+ imagery whereas the WVS was created off of God knows what, by who knows what. The WVS vectors are grossly enlarged and misplotted
Now for the "wasted money" part. I think it is ironic that an enlarged misplot could cost money. I looked at cataloged imagery held by Digital Globe. It turns out that someone, probably NIMA or Navy, had the enlarged WVS area imaged. Kingman Reef is covered by three Digital Globe images. The Digital Globe sequence of images encompassing the misplotted WVS Kingman Reef consists of at least 60 images. At about $1,500 an image a big chunk of deep ocean was studied. The imagery alone would have cost $90,000. It appears someone commissioned the satellite imaging of a vector misplot! Somebody spent good money to determine the extent of bad mapping. Seems like bad business to me.
Enjoy!
Labels: atoll, Digital Globe, EVS, island, Landsat, Line Islands, map, Marplot, Pacific, reef
