Eiao FP - Don't Blow This Island Up!
Eiao Island FP
If you follow my posts, you will know that Eiao Island has been mapped a few times before. Once using a hybrid series of Landsat and WRS images and another time using SRTM data. It was a good effort, but there was a problem with clouds obscuring a portion of the shoreline.
Using Digital Globe HiRes imagery with 0% cloud cover, Eiao Island has been definitively mapped. Not only is the shoreline mapped with exquisite detail, as you can tell with the 1:8,750 scale map and image, but vegetation is accurately plotted.
Now to explain the title of this post, Don't Blow This Island Up!. Eiao Island was selected and explored by the French Nuclear Agency and French military as the next Pacific test site for nuclear devices. I believe the plan was to drill into the island and ignite nuclear weapons.
Hasn't this island had it's fair share of troubles. Well intended sailors and erstwhile settlers released pigs, goats, cattle and sheep. These critters have eaten much of the native vegetation. Way back when (not sure of the date) the French used Eiao Island as a prison. The prison was finally abandoned and the island reverted back to it's pigs, goats, cattle and sheep.
Now the French want to blow the island up. Eiao Island does not deserve this sort of mistreatment. Fortunately, the island was spared. The French government bowed to world pressure to halt their work to prep this island for nuclear destruction. Still, it is overrun by pigs, goats, cattle and sheep, but the nuclear devices are no longer a threat, for now. Let's hope forever.
view Eiao Island on Google Maps
Enjoy!
Labels: Digital Globe, EVS, feral animals, France, island, Marplot, Marquesas, nuclear weapons, Pacific
