Howland Island
- ISS010-E-9287
- 03 December 2004
- 18:56 UTC
Howland Island lies 560 km north-northwest from the island of McKean in the Rawaki Islands (Howland Island is an outlier of the Rawaki Islands) and 66 km north from its nearest neighbour of Baker Island. It lies at the northern extremity of the Tokelau Seamount Chain — a long chain of seamounts extending for around 1,300 km through the Rawaki (Phoenix) Islands to the atolls of Tokelau in the southeast.
Both Howland Island and Baker Island are unincorporated territories of the United States under the jurisdiction of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, which manages the island as the Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge.
At 1.8 km² in area, Howland Island is elongate in outline with a length (orientated north to south) of 2.8 km and maximum width of around 1 km. Terrain is low and flat with a slight central depression within the interior. The entire island is ringed by a low circumferential beach crest with broad fringing reefs on the north, east and south sides; fringing reefs off the western shore are much narrower. The arid climate of the Central Pacific supports a scant vegetation cover of low shrubs and grasses.
image: earth sciences and image analysis laboratory, nasa johnson space center
