Pronounced Ki-ris-mas, Kiritimati Island has a large infilled lagoon
that gives it the largest land area (125 square miles, 321 square km) of any
atoll in the world. Captain Cook named the atoll Christmas Island when he
arrived on Christmas Eve in 1777. Used for nuclear testing in the 1950s and
1960s, the island is now valued for its marine and wildlife resources. It is
particularly important as a seabird nesting site?with an estimated 6 million
birds using or breeding on the island, including several million Sooty Terns.
Rainfall on Kiritimati is linked to El Niño patterns, with long droughts
experienced between the wetter El Niño years.
This image is based on a mosaic of four digital photographs taken on 16 January
2002 from the Space Station Alpha as part of the Crew
Earth Observations Project. The
underlying data have 10 meter spatial resolution. Coral reefs are one of the areas
selected as a scientific theme for this project (see also the recent Earth
Observatory article, Mapping the Decline of Coral Reefs.