Bouvet Island is known as the most remote island in the world; Antarctica, over 1600 kilometers (994 miles) to the south, is the nearest land mass. Located near the junction between the South American, African, and Antarctic tectonic plates, the island is mostly formed from a shield volcano—a broad, gently sloping cone formed by thin, fluid lavas—that is almost entirely covered by glaciers.
Acquired on on May 5, 2009, this true-color image shows Marion Island in the Indian Ocean. Sparsely vegetated, this volcanic island has remnants of snow near its summit.
This astronaut photograph shows the southern end of Paramushir Island after a snowfall. Four volcanic centers are brightly lit on their western slopes and deeply shadowed to the east.
In the western Pacific Ocean, a new volcanic island that formed in the shadow of Nishino-shima has merged with it. The island has doubled in size as the eruption continues.
Semisopochnoi is the “Island of the Seven Mountains, ” or more precisely in Russian: “having seven hills.” This uninhabited volcanic island is also an important nesting area for maritime birds of the North Pacific.
The ghostly white shapes northeast and immediately southwest of Wrangel Island are sea ice. Over the course of the satellite record, Arctic sea ice has advanced and retreated past Wrangel Island many times. From 1979 to 2000, the sea ice edge at the end of summer generally fell somewhere in the vicinity of Wrangel Island, but this is not the first summer when the sea ice edge has retreated well north of the island.
On September 25, 2002, astronauts aboard the International Space Station viewed Easter Island, one of the most remote locations on Earth. Easter Island is more than 2000 miles from the closest populations on Tahiti and Chile—even more remote than astronauts orbiting at 210 nautical miles above the Earth. Archaeologists believe the island was discovered and colonized by Polynesians at about 400 AD. Subsequently, a unique culture developed. The human population grew to levels that could not be sustained by the island. A civil war resulted, and the island’s deforestation and ecosystem collapse was nearly complete.