Geography of French Polynesia

This article describes the geography of French Polynesia.

Location
Oceania, archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, about half way between South America and Australia
Geographic coordinates
15°00′S 140°00′W / 15°S 140°W / -15; -140
Map references
Oceania
Area
  • Total: 4,167 km² (Around 130 islands)
  • Land: 3,827 km²
  • Water: 340 km²
Land boundaries
0 km
Coastline
2,525 km
Maritime claims
  • Exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
  • Territorial sea: 12 nm
Climate
Tropical, but moderate
Terrain
Mixture of rugged high islands and low islands with reefs
Elevation extremes
  • Lowest point: Pacific Ocean 0 m
  • Highest point: Mont Orohena ( Tahiti ) 2,241 m
Natural resources
Timber, fish, cobalt, hydropower
Land use
  • Arable land: 0.75%
  • Permanent crops: 5.5%
  • Other: 93.75% (2005)
Irrigated land
10 km2 (2003)
Natural hazards
Occasional cyclonic storms in January
Environment - current issues
NA
Geography - note
Includes five archipelagoes; Makatea in French Polynesia is one of the three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific Ocean - the others are Banaba (Ocean Island) in Kiribati and Nauru

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    The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.
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    Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.
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    The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)