Reference Map

Reference Map of Tahiti and Mo‘orea in French Polynesia, the South Pacific archipelago. Published by Tom Patterson / shadedrelief.com.

I am a retired US National Park Service cartographer who enjoys making maps of beautiful places with spectacular terrain. Mapping Tahiti and Mo‘orea is something that I have wanted to do since visiting these islands in 2019. But incomplete elevation data in the island interiors, often obscured by clouds, delayed my plans. That recently changed with the release of new 20-meter elevation data of Tahiti and Mo‘orea, and 100-meter bathymetric data of the surrounding seafloor. So I jumped into the project. The resulting reference map below highlights three major environmental zones: the ocean bottom from which the volcanoes that became Tahiti and Mo‘orea arose; the narrow coastal strips alive with coral reefs and burgeoning human settlement; and, moving inland, cloud-capped mountain spires. I hope that you will find the map informative and useful. Tom Patterson February 15, 2025

featured in

Hawaii Pocket Maps

covered parks

National Park of American Samoa National Park

source

www.shadedrelief.com, February 2025