Cape Verde Islands

The Cape Verde island group sits in the Atlantic Ocean about 600 kilometers from West Africa. The ten islands are steep and rocky, volcanic in origin, which makes them look brown in this image. The image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on October 17, 2005. The only traces of green vegetation are on the two largest southern islands, Fogo (left) and SãTiago (right). Of the 4,033 square kilometers of land area on the islands, only nine percent is arable. Much of that land is on the fertile volcanic soils of Fogo.

Fogo is actually the peak of a massive volcano with a nine-kilometer wide circular caldera at its center. The caldera is dark brown in this image, surrounded by the lighter tan and green of the rest of the circular island. Appropriately, “Fogo” translates to “fire” in Portuguese. The still-active volcano was erupting almost constantly when late fifteenth-century Portuguese explorers discovered the island, and the island’s glowing peak served as a natural lighthouse for roughly two centuries. The volcano’s most recent eruption was in 1995. To read more about Fogo’s activity, see the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program.

Apart from volcanic activity, the other major hazards that residents of Cape Verde face are frequent African dust storms and drought. A climatic extension of the Sahara Desert to their east, the islands receive infrequent and sporadic rain. From October to May, dry harmattan winds frequently blow dust from the Sahara Desert west over the Atlantic and the Cape Verde Islands. A light veil of dust may have been in the air on October 17, when this image was taken, as the ocean to the west of the islands appears lighter than the ocean to the northeast. The discoloration may also have been caused by sunglint, the reflection of sunlight off the surface of the water.

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Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Published October 19, 2005
Data acquired October 17, 2005

Source:

Aqua > MODIS