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
Famous quotes containing the words geography of, geography and/or french:
“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.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“In French literature, you can choose à la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.”
—José Bergamín (18951983)