Holy cow... Have you seen this?



I found a reproduction of this lovely map in the pages of this month's Discover magazine. It is a map of the most remote places on our planet, as defined by their distance from major cities (and also shipping channels). The scale at the bottom shows you how many hours (or days) it would take to get from pixel A to the nearest city. The darkest spots are the most remote ones.

The map was produced by Andrew Nelson of the Global Environmental Monitoring Unit of the European Commission. It is available here in a bigger form. They grant authorization to reproduce it, so long as you attribute them as the authors. Amazing work, Mr. Nelson; Gorgeous!
The Sahara, the Amazon Basin, the Australian Outback, New Guinea, boreal Canada, Greenland, the Rub' al Khali, northern Siberia, the interior of Borneo, and the Tibetan Plateau all jump out as remote locations. I post this map today because this evening I'm getting on a plane and heading for another remote location, the dark spot down at the southern tip of South America. Lily and I are spending the holidays in Patagonia. I'll be there for the next two and a half weeks, and I'll be back to DC and NOVA in the new year. To keep you amused in the meantime, I've scheduled posts to appear here on the blog while I am away. Enjoy your holidays!

Labels: maps, patagonia, science and society, south america, travel