Issue 106: Atlas: Oceania
In this week’s issue:
- A look at Pacific island nations in our second Atlas installment
- On-the-ground targets for aerial calibration
- A pleasing pattern in Australia
Welcome to the second issue of Atlas, a series that explores different stunning areas of Earth every few weeks.
This is an archived issue. Sign up here to receive the Planet Snapshots newsletter every Thursday morning.
Feature Story: Atlas: Oceania
It’s hard to pinpoint, but there’s just something about the name Oceania that conjures thoughts of the ocean. Actually pinpointing anything on this continent is fairly difficult because unlike, say, Europe or South America, Oceania is largely, well, ocean. It’s the least populated continent after the uninhabited Antarctica with less than 1% of all people on Earth. And yet long ago humans settled the tens of thousands of Pacific islands that now make up this dynamic region, the most populated of which are Australia, eastern New Guinea, New Zealand, and Fiji.
Australia may be the largest geopolitical player in Oceania, but many of the other 13 countries have a growing voice on the international stage. These “small island developing states’’ are actually better characterized as “large ocean states.” Their terrestrial footprint is small but their maritime domain is the largest. It includes stewarding some of Earth’s most critical reefs and marine populations over an ocean so large that if you center it in your view of Earth, it takes up nearly the whole view.
If you’re looking for clues into the region’s colonial history, a quick look at the Union Jack tucked in the corner of many Oceania’s flags should do. Another less visible but damaging colonial relic is America’s 67 Cold War era nuclear tests conducted in the Marshall Islands. Displaced locals, nuclear fallout, and contaminated soil have left not just a sour taste in their mouth but an unsafe environment to live in. The Runit Dome — known to locals as “the Tomb” — is a crumbling concrete sarcophagus that contains 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of radioactive debris.
Kiribati is the first country to celebrate the New Year, with many of the other large ocean states following suit. But Oceania is living in the future in more ways than one. Anyone who mentions the “far-off effects” of climate change likely has their head buried in the ever-shrinking supply of sand. For it doesn’t take much to see that the low-lying islands of the Pacific are already facing an existential threat.
Before COP26 in 2021, Tuvalu’s foreign minister gave a speech about sea level rise while standing knee-deep in water, and the country is planning to fully digitize their culture and history before the island is entirely consumed by the hungry tide. Scroll down to the bottom of global rankings for CO2 emissions and you’ll find most of these countries with next-to-nothing contributions. And yet they’re on the frontline despite being way back on the list. For Pacific island nations, Atlantis isn’t myth, it’s prophecy.
Much of Oceania sits along the Ring of Fire: a string of volcanoes that traces tectonic plate boundaries around the Pacific Ocean. Islands grown from fire are now threatened by a different kind of warming, thrust into a crucible not of their making. For the more than 40 million people who call this unique region of Earth their home, preserving its stunning beauty and their way of life is a formidable challenge. But Oceania is no stranger to change.
Satellite Explainer: Calibration Targets
The first week of the new year is for two things: bailing on overly optimistic resolutions and remembering how to do your job again. We can’t help you with the former, but perhaps these calibration targets can provide some inspiration for your post-holiday slump.
Satellites and some aircraft often calibrate their onboard sensors with fixed points on-the-ground. These are usually easily visible symbols or natural areas with consistent colors and flat surfaces that make for easy and repeatable camera adjustments. NASA has used Nevada’s Railroad Valley dry lakebed for over 30 years, for example. But many others are outdated, like this giant compass rose built in California before GPS made navigation a lot simpler.
Some even act like an optometrist asking you to read letters of decreasing size from across the room. These tri-bar targets test the resolution of a camera. They start big and work their way down in size. The smallest unit of tri-bars that’s visible to a camera indicates its optical limit.
Maybe we’re justifying our early year brain fog, but we think there’s something comforting about advanced technology needing help to focus from time to time.
Remote Sensations: Field Patterns
As a rule of thumb, if you want to catch our attention then send us an email. But if you really want to stand out, we suggest converting a huge area of Earth’s surface into a pleasing-looking pattern. That’s likely not what these Australian farmers had in mind when they planted these crop fields, but we’re having a hard time peeling our eyes away from it nonetheless.
All imagery Ⓒ 2024 Planet Labs PBC
Editor: Ryder Kimball | Images: Ryder Kimball, Max Borrmann, Julian Peschel, and Maarten Lambrechts
