Images of Bangkok, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and several other parts of Asia appear elsewhere in the Tutorial. Here we show several more cities. First is Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia. This IKONOS image shows a current trend in modern Asia, namely, the many skyscraper buildings that make up the central cities - belying any misimpressions that the Asian world is still backwards.
Malaysia extends north-south in a peninsula-like landmass that ends as an island at its bottom. Here it is in a mosaic format, with southern Thailand to its north and part of Sumatra to its west:
The southern island hosts the famed city of Singapore; this small island is now an independent nation. Here are a pair of SPOT images of Singapore, the first in false color image and the second a natural color view
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Singapore has also become a city of skyscrapers, as evident in this recent photo:
A highlight of any visit was to have coffee at the same table used by the famed writer W. Somerset Maugham many times during his stays in Singapore in the internationally reknown Raffles Hotel, reputed then to be the best (in ambiance) in the Far East.
Thailand has a rather strange shape: a "fat" region in its north and a "thin" region down the Malaysian Peninsula:
We saw images of Bangkok, Thailand on the second page of the Overview and will see several more in Section 7. For here, consider this satellite image that shows Bangkok to be just inland from the sea:
To Thailand's east are Cambodia and Vietnam. The Vietnam War remains a sensitive issue to Americans. In the Games subsection of this Section, you saw a Landsat image of southern Vietnam. Here is a mosaic that includes all of Vietnam and neighboring countries.
Older Americans remember the major Vietnamese cities that were so often in the news. Here are three of the largest:
Here is a Landsat-1 image of the Mekong River (blue ribbon) in parts of Vietnam and Cambodia, including the upper delta lowlands. Much of that area is given to rice fields and paddies. Some of the black in the image may be clear water; perhaps some black is associated with burning of non-rice crops:
Typical of the inland Mekong River, with its meandering course, and laden with silt, is the vista seen in this aerial oblique photo.
The Mekong Delta is zeroed in on in this Envisat image. The map beneath it identifies locations in much of this image.
The mouths of the Mekong pass through dense mangrove forests, as seen in this satellite image.
Over the centuries, much of the delta and land further inland have been deforested. The fertile soil and the flooding during the rainy season is ideal for growing rice. Vietnam is now a world supplier of this staple. Here is a view of fields given to rice and other crops. The second picture shows typical jungle in the parts of the Delta country kept untouched.
We journey north to the world's most populous nation, China, with more than 1,300,000,000 citizens. South of Siberia, China is the largest country (third largest in the world), in land area south of Siberia. It also has the fastest growing economy in today's (Flat Earth) world, the result owing in part to the new policies of its Communist government. China is becoming a superpower. Here is a satellite view (mosaic?) of China and many of its neighbors (look for the yellow line boundaries). Beneath is a map of the region:
References in the news is often made of the Provinces of China. Here is a map naming these:
We have already visited mainland China around Beijing on page 4-4 and also in the Games subsection of Section 6. Shown here is a full winter Landsat-1 scene in which Beijing can be located by the small square in right center. Beijing lies at the boundary between the Northeastern Plains and the extension of the Great Khingan Range that is as high as 2300 m (7600 ft);
The image below is an ESA SAR image of Beijing and surroundings:
North of Beijing is the Great Wall of China, which early astronauts had trouble seeing from their spacecraft. Here is an astronaut photo (300 km; 200 miles north of Beijing) that shows the curving extensions of the Wall, built centuries ago to keep out invaders mostly from Mongolia. Beneath it is a SIR-C radar image of the wall:
The Great Wall is also visible in this Landsat image:
Northeast of Beijing, close to the East China Sea, is the city of Tianjin, sixth largest (11,500,000 people) in the country. Like so many other Chinese cities it has become modernized but traces its history back to early dynasties. Here is a SPOT image and a night scene:
Also to the northeast is the Heilongjiang Province (which includes much of what was formerly Manchuria). Its capital is Haerhpin (or Harbin), seen in this image from space:
A vast plains in north central China is the "bread basket" of this nation. This Landsat image of an agricultural area in Henan Province near Anhui has a remarkable similarity to parts of the U.S. Great Plains, including square farmlands where winter wheat is the principal crop:
This IKONOS image shows farmland in north-central China. Note the conventional rectangular plots as well as terrace farming, seen in the ground photo below:
With a population now in excess of 1.2 billion residents, China depends heavily on extensive farming. This SPOT image of rural agriculture is notable for the elongate shape of individual farms, each operated by a family, and similar to the practice noted earlier in the Sudan:
Central China is drained by the Yellow River (or Huang He, in Chinese), seen in this photo:
That long stream receives its name from the color of the sediments it carries. These are mostly fine silty loess (windblown dust derived from rocks carried by continental glaciers in the Pleistocene). The lowlands are covered with many meters of loess, which makes a good soil for crops. The loess is easily dissected, forming long gullies. The Luliang and Hwo Montains, also loess-covered, are made of sedimentary rocks, seen in this Landsat image:
Loess consists of fine silt and dust, which can produce sediment units that are capable of forming cliffs and can be cut into blocks usable as temporary building stones:
Loess deposits are always transported to their final sites by wind. In the United States, the source of the loess materials is glacial flour. In China much of the loess is derived from deflation of sediments in the Gobi and Taklamaklan deserts. The deposits form distince landforms in the Loess Plateau of China, shown in this map:
This is typical loess terrain:
As seen from space, Plateau topography looks thusly:
China, in the last 20 years, has had a very robust economy, with a high degree of modernization that is increasing both domestic output and goods for the world market. China has recognized a pressing need for a much greater supply of electric energy. It is currently engaged in a huge power plant project: The Three Gorges dam on the Yangtse River. When completed in 2009, the dam will funnel water through 20 generator stations. The dam itself will be the largest in the world (181 meters [about 600 ft] high and nearly 3 km [2 miles] across); the lake formed behind it has displaced more than a million Chinese. This is a satellite view of the dam in 2006 in context with its surroundings:
The next image is an aerial oblique photo of the dam in operation:
Digital Globe's Quickbird-2 produced this high resolution of the dam when the spillways were operating:
Like the Yellow River, the Yangtse carries a huge load of sediment. In this Landsat Band 5 image the sediment appears offshore at the Yangtse mouth, north of Shanghai:
In South China lie three major cities: Guangzhou (formerly called Canton), seen in this Landsat-1 image as a black area left of center; Macao (once a Portuguese colony) on the shore of the large sea inlet near the mouth of the Chu-kiang estuary; and Hong Kong, just off the image in the lower right, in a peninsula known as the New Territories (when it was a British possession until restored to China in the 1990s). The region is heavily farmed and has also become industrialized.
We visited Hong Kong briefly in the Games answers in this Section. Here is another high resolution image of this fabled city (south is to the bottom):
Also in South China is the rapidly growing city of Guilin, seen in this SPOT-4 image:
Guilin, on the Li River west of Hong Kong, is one of the top tourist destinations in China. It is in the heart of the karst topography (steep peaks eroded from limestone) in southern China (see page 17-5). Here is a view of this landscape near the city:
Like the United States, China has mostly mountains, some plains, and several desert areas. In western China, the Himalaya Mountain group (south) and Tianshan mountains (north) block rain storms so that the vast Takla Makan Desert in Sinkiang Province has developed, shown here in this SPOT-5 image:
This AVHRR shows the northern edge of the Takla Makan Desert and the Tian Shan ranges:
The entire Takla Maklan basin appears in this space image:
To the north and east is the now independent Mongolia, a vast and starkly populated land of nomads. Here are a satellite image of the entire country, and a view of its capital, Ulaanbaatar.
China became "The Peoples Republic" 12 years after the 1937 Long March of Mao-Zedong and his armies and his victory in late 1949 over Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army. Chiang left the mainland and settled his forces in Taiwan (earlier called Formosa). This beautiful island remains in Nationalist control today. Here is a space image of the island:
Taiwan is a picturesque island - popular with artists - with prominent mountains in its interior:
Taiwan's capital is Taipei, in the northern tip, as seen in this Landsat image and in a ground photo:
Off southeast China lies the Korean Peninsula northwest of Japan. This AVHRR image shows both North and South Korea:
Here is a satellite image that shows the capital of South Korea (pinkish-red) inland from the port of Inchon (site of MacArthur's bold amphibious landing during the Korean War).
This ASTER image shows some of Seoul on the right:
The capital of North Korea is Pyongyang, seen here in this SPOT image:
Parts of Japan have been shown elsewhere in the Tutorial, including Tokyo. At this point we will now show the entire island group making up Japan, as imaged by OrbView2.
This next image is also a view of the entire Japanese island group. It is placed here to make an important point - a caution. The northern half of the main island, Honshu, is rendered, in this verion, in the same green as the southern half. The mosaic above shows the northern half to be in brown. This seems to be a discrepancy. The caption provided with the image below comments that the Japanese islands are still largely forested throughout. One web site states that 66% of the land is forest. If so the first mosaic seems to show too little forest greenery whereas the second shows too much. It would seem that the heavy population (now 127 million people) of Japan is likely to have removed much of the forests over the centuries. In other words, the OrbView image is more factual. If so, one must beware of space imagery - know how it was processed, and recognize that color assignments can be misleading.
But we want to zero in on Tokyo by presenting this huge city in full context with its surroundings by displaying these Landsat images:
Some idea of the extent to which this now modern city has grown is given by this aerial oblique photo:
The sprawling nature of Tokyo is revealed in this nighttime photo taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
In the heart of Tokyo is the Imperial Palace, home of the Japanese Emperor, as seen in this Quickbird image:
The second city of Japan is Osaka, shown here in this Landsat subscene:
One of the most famed (many say imfamous) places on Earth is Hiroshima, in western Honshu. It was almost leveled by the first atomic bomb to be dropped near the end of World War II. The city was completely rebuilt, as shown in this ASTER image:
Once again a part of Japan, Iwo Jima is also famous now for two reasons: First, it was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Attacked in March of 1945 by U.S. Marines, its Japanese defenders held out for several weeks. The most famous photo of the Pacific Campaign was the raising of the flag on Mt. Suribachi:
Second, Clint Eastwood has directed two great movies, released in 2006, that re-enact the battle - one movie from the American perspective; the other even more remarkable from the Japanese soldier's experience. Here is a Digital Globe image of Iwo Jima and an aerial view that shows the volcanic peak that is Suribachi and the black volcanic sands that cover the island. The airport on this small island reveals why more than 7000 U.S. and 20000 Japanese were killed in the conflict; this was to be a forward base for bombing Japan.
After Iwo Jima came the final land battle of World War II, the invasion of Okinawa. The battle lasted from late March til June of 1945 and cost the U.S. about 12000 dead and the Japanese about 100000. The island is 135 km (90 miles) long. Here it is as seen by the Japanese earth observing satellite:
Much of Southeast Asia consists of hundreds of islands, many located along tectonic subduction zones. Here is a map that includes the Philippines and Indonesia:
Several large and many small islands make up the Philippines. Here is a Landsat view of much of Luzon, with Manila being the blue area in the arcuate bay in center left. Mt Pinatubo, seen elsewhere in this Tutorial, is to its north.
The Taal volcano, still active, is situated in a lake near the lower left corner. Here it is in a radar image:
Other Philippine islands, including Mindinao, appear in this space image.
Near and north of the Equator are various islands differing in size. The largest island in the group is New Guinea. The western half is New Idrian, now a part of Indonesia. Here it is in a mosaic:
In the Landsat scene below, the mountainous central region of New Guinea is very heavily vegetated with forests of a tropical nature.
A confederation of thousands of islands makes up the nation of Indonesia. The country has the largest Muslim population in the world - well over 250 million. This nation extends for thousands of miles E-W and includes Sumatra, Java, Bali, western New Guinea and Borneo. The satellite image below shows the main islands (see map above for their names):
The majority of the Indonesian islands comprise an "island arc" - a series of uplifts in the ocean on the continental plate side of a tectonic zone undergoing subduction (here, to the south) the lower part of which remains submerged by the ocean.
The next image is another mosaic that includes all of the most populated island of Java:
Jarkata is the capital of Indonesia. It lies against the ocean near the northwest corner of the Island of Java. Here is a Landsat-2 view, obtained in 1976 when the city's population was about 6 million.:
The city is the uniformly blue-green area next to the sea. Jakarta is a sprawling modern city, as evident in this ground photo.
Part of this scene is captured in this high resolution GoogleEarth image of central Jakarta:
The Indonesian state of Sumatra is the 6th largest island in the world. The relief map shown below was made using satellite radar data as an aid:
Between Java and Sumatra is the island of Krakatoa, in the Sunda strait. After several moderate precursor eruptions, on August 26, 1883 the island literally blew up in one of the most violent eruptions in recorded history. The sound reached people a thousand or more miles away. A huge tsunami was created, killing more than 36000. Sunsets were reddened for several years owing to stratospheric ash. A new volcano, Anak Krakatoa, has built up since this catastrophic event.
