How many times have you said that you were in the “middle of nowhere?” You were probably being facetious: There are only a few places on the planet that might qualify as the most remote places on the planet. Indeed, as webcams, photographs by explorers, and satellite images allow us to peer at remote places from the ground and from above, these places are in some ways less remote than even a few years ago. Because some of these impacts are controversial, and because the very definition of “remoteness” is subjective, these topics are excellent for discussing in the classroom. They invite investigation using GIS.

One source cites Bouvet Island as the world’s most remote island. A GIS would help me find out if this is indeed the case. I started ArcGIS, added a countries layer from Book 2 of the Our World GIS Education series from ESRI Press, projected it to Eckert IV so that my subsequent measurements would be on a projected surface, added a satellite and ocean floor topographic image, and searched for Bouvet. Given Bouvet’s latitude, do you think it is covered by ice? How can you test your hypothesis? To find the nearest continent, I began drawing a circle beginning at Bouvet Island, stopping when it touched a continent, and noting the distance. I drew another circle, stopping when it touched the next nearest continent.

The circles above indicate that Bouvet lies 1,277 km from Antarctica and 2,515 km from Africa. These measurements are approximate as they were drawn a scale of 1:35,000,000. Noticing other islands to the northwest of Bouvet, I used the distance tool and some research to determine that 2,244 km lies between Bouvet and the nearest inhabited islands: Tristan de Cunha. Compare these measurements to other islands in the world to test the claim that Bouvet is the most remote island in the world.

Dig deeper into its history: How can Bouvet be part of Norway, when the measure tool indicates that Norway is nearly 14,000 km away?

- Joseph Kerski, Education Manager, ESRI.