Introduction to Easter Island ~ Begging! ! geography

Easter Island is an island in the South Pacific. The local language is Rapa Nui Island, which is located 3000 kilometers west of Chile. Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands in the world, which is more than 2,000 kilometers away from the nearest inhabited island, Pitcairn Island. The island is roughly triangular and consists of three volcanoes. It and Juan Fernandez Islands are two possessions of Chile in the South Pacific. Easter Island is famous for hundreds of mysterious giant stone statues.

geographical position

Easter Island is located in the southeast of the Pacific Ocean, at the intersection of 27 degrees south latitude and 109 degrees west longitude.

Easter Island Statue /moai

Near, with an area of about 1 17 square kilometers, it belongs to Valparaiso, Chile. It is about 3000 kilometers away from Chile in South America and far away from other islands in the Pacific Ocean, so it is an island in the southeast of the Pacific Ocean. Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands, which is 2075 kilometers away from the settled Pitcairn Island. The island is roughly triangular and consists of three volcanoes.

Topographic elements

This mountainous island is not a part of the sunken land, but some volcanoes rising from the bottom of the sea.

A typical high island in the ocean. Three extinct volcanoes, mainly composed of tuff (a porous rock formed by solid volcanic fragments) and its lava flow, make the island a unique triangle. There are some parasitic tuff craters and cones scattered in the territory (that is, craters and cones formed on or near the volcano after the earliest crater was blocked), while there are many eroded lava areas in other areas, and obsidian is everywhere. The stone-free surface soil is barren; Suitable places for large-scale farming are mainly distributed in Garroa and Mattavelli in the southwest, the plains in the southwest of Vaihu and La Nuorala Ku volcanoes, and the prehistoric Peuker Peninsula in the eastern corner of the island. Rainwater accumulates in a swamp-covered crater lake, which depends on some volcanoes, such as Rano Kao, Ranolaku and Rano Aroi. An intermittent stream, supplied by the volcanic lake of Ranu Aroi, flows down the slope of Trevaka and pours into the permeable soil. About 9 14 meters (3,000 feet) wide, the Ranuko volcano in the deep crater lake supplies water to Ann Garroa. The coast is composed of soft and eroded gray cliffs, with a vertical steep drop of about 152 ~ 305 meters (500 ~ 1000 feet); Some long, low, hard and rugged lava structures sometimes cut off cliffs. There are no natural ports, but there are anchorages in Garroa in the west bank, Vinapu and Hotu-Iti in the south bank, the sea near Anakena and Bahia la Perouse in the north bank. There are some small islands near the coast, mainly Motunnui and Mo Island. The only real beach is Anakerna, and most other beaches are gravel. There are many caves.

There are many flaming mountains on the island, and the highest point is 60 1 m above sea level. The ground is rugged and covered with thick tuff. Most of the topography on the island is flat hills, grasslands and volcanoes. The beaches on the island are mostly rocky and there are cliffs everywhere. No one is guarding the bay. There are only three beaches on the island and the sand is very clean.

The northeast is higher than the Polynesian islands. The southwest is flat, 3700 kilometers from the west coast of Chile. There is a volcano at each corner of the triangle. The corner on the left is Mount Rannock. On the right is the Ranolaco volcano, with the largest giant stone statue group on the island on its slope. In the north corner is Ranualu volcano, adjacent to Trevaka Mountain.

islander

The inhabitants of the island are the easternmost immigrants in the Polynesian subgroup of the Marguesas race. The original Labonui vocabulary has been lost. Before 1864, missionaries introduced Tahiti dialect to the slaughtered residents, only some mixed Polynesian and non-Polynesian languages were recorded. Fluent in Spanish. Traditionally, islanders consider themselves descendants of two races: long-eared people and short-eared people. Intermarriage is common. More and more people of foreign descent came in.

Climate environment

Tropical maritime climate, no streams on the surface, with crater lake as the drinking water source, and the diameter of Ranoko crater lake is 1.6 km. The climate is warm and humid, with an average annual temperature of 22℃. It is rainy all year round, with annual precipitation 1300mm. The month with the largest rainfall is May, and the rainfall reaches 159mm. Heavy rain can't change the lifestyle of the people on the island, but fishing and agriculture are affected by the moon and the wind.

The climate is subtropical, that is, sunny and dry. 1~ March is the hottest, with an average temperature of 23℃ (73 ℉); It is coldest from June to August, with an average temperature of 18℃(64℉). The average annual precipitation is about 1, 250 mm (49 inches), but it varies greatly from year to year. September is the driest, and June and July have the most rainfall, which is consistent with the passage time of the southern winter front. The winds in June and August are irregular, and the other times are mainly trade winds from the east and southeast. From September to March of the following year, the Peruvian current (also known as Humboldt current) flows through the island, and the average water temperature is about 265438 0℃ (70 ℉).

Main resources

plant

Easter Island is a grassland, and there are no trees higher than 3 meters. The vegetation is dominated by shrubs and grasses. Botanists have only found 47 species of native higher plants on the island, most of which are herbs and ferns, and only 4 species of shrubs.

The local flora and fauna are very poor. The analysis of pollen deposits shows that there were trees and shrubs, including Jubaia trees, on the island when the local people were farming before the fire broke out. There are only 3 1 flowering wild trees, 14 ferns and 14 mosses. Grass and small ferns grow on the barren land, while the crater lake covered by swamp is densely covered by two imported American plants: Totora reed bush (an important building material) and Polygonum (a plant of Polygonum, a medicinal plant). Before the arrival of Europeans, some cultivated plants were introduced, some from America and some from Polynesia. The main variety is sweet potato, which is widely planted in plantations and is the main food for residents. The earliest introduced varieties are gourd, sugarcane, banana, taro, yam and two useful trees: Broussonetia papyrifera in Asia, whose bark can be used for weaving; Triumfetta semitriloba In America, bark can be made into rope.

animal

Among the wild animals, there are no large insects except exotic mice and a small lizard that may be native to China. It doesn't even have native bats and land birds. As for livestock, there are only chickens.

The isolated environment on the island makes animals have great limitations. Vertebrates only fish or seabirds have the ability to fly long distances. In addition, there are spiders, insects, earthworms, snails, centipedes and so on. 1866, missionaries introduced sheep, horses, cows, pigs and other domestic animals. A large number of wild cats living in wild caves do not know how they were introduced.

Before humans appeared, the only vertebrate that could fly long distances was fish or seabirds. There are only a few kinds of animals on land, such as isopods (an order of Crustacea), spiders, insects, earthworms, snails and millipedes. In modern times, there are a lot of flies, big cockroaches and a little scorpion. The local edible Polynesian mice were later replaced by larger European mice. From 65438 to 0864, the missionaries who settled on the island introduced sheep, horses, cows and pigs. 1870 After foreign ranchers started to operate commercial pastures, sheep were particularly abundant in about 100. In the middle of1980s, the sheep industry came to an end, but the cattle industry flourished. Since 1880, Chilean quail chickens, quails and a kind of baby eagle have been added to the wild animals. Turtles and seals are rare animals, and there are lobsters and various coastal and deep-sea fish around the coast.