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800 DPI

Beira, Mozambique (January 1986)

STS61C-37-0042

Beira, a beach resort and a major commercial city for this region, is visible at the center of this near-vertical photograph. The city, with a population of more than 370 000, has a good railroad system that helps promote this city as a terminus for external trade for the two landlocked countries of Malawi and Zimbabwe. The large sediment plume that enters the Mozambique Channel south of Beira shows that a substantial quantity of suspended waterborne materials is being carried by the Pung�e River—and to a lesser extent by the smaller Buzi River. The landscape both north and south of the Pung�e River is relatively flat and drains poorly. Many lakes and the older interconnected stream channels north of the city have created a large area of swamps and marshes.

800 DPI

Bora-Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia (October 1994)

STS068-258-042

Considered by many as one of the natural wonders of the world, the island of Bora-Bora is a single island surrounded by an extensive coral reef and a beautiful blue lagoon captured in the center of this low-oblique photograph. Like most of its neighboring islands, Bora-Bora, a remnant of a severely eroded, exposed tip of an extinct volcano, is one of the volcanic Society Islands, part of French Polynesia. The coral reef north of Bora-Bora is Tupai Atoll. The two islands southeast of Bora-Bora—Tahaa (northern island) and Raiatea (larger southern island)—are encircled by a single coral reef system. These three islands and atoll represent an excellent teaching tool to explain the evolutionary physical cycle, which requires thousands of years, through which these volcanic islands pass. Three types of coral reefs—fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls—develop in sequence around the south Pacific volcanic islands. Similarly, the volcanic islands are born and erode until no land or inner islands exist, and only the coral atolls remain.

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