Songo Songo Island Map

Inspired in part by the work of Peter Minton at EVS-Islands, earlier this week I put together a map of Songo Songo Island, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania that I had the good fortune to visit last summer. Administratively, the Songo Songo ward is part of the Kilwa District, Lindi Region of Tanzania. The Songo Songo group of islands is best known for the significant underlying natural gas field. The main island is the center of the Songo Songo Gas-to-Electricity Project, which includes on-island gas processing facilities and a pipeline network to transport the gas to Dar es Salaam where it powers five gas turbine electricity generators.

Despite the infrastructure present, walking along its white sand, palm tree lined beaches, the island seems remote and untouched, as one might expect of a small island in the Indian Ocean. The Songas facilities are confined to a small corner of the island and are essentially invisible unless you purposefully seek them out. Children from the settlement on Songo Songo initially shy away at the sight of visitors, but curiosity and playfulness gradually win out over shyness. One afternoon sitting on the beach we found ourselves literally encircled by a dozen smiling, laughing faces. We couldn't convey anything of importance to them with our limited Swahili, but they seemed amused nonetheless to be in our company, just as we were to be in theirs.

Click here for a larger image

Working with Quantum GIS, I started with a Landsat7 ETM+ image of the island from which I could digitize all the features that would eventually make up the map. I created shapefiles of the shoreline, sand, vegetation, built areas, roads and paths, and reefs. It would have been nice to find a shapefile of contour lines for the island, or digitize contour lines myself from a DEM. But there is very little change in elevation on the island, so it's not the end of the world. I did try to include a scale bar in kilometers, but the software wasn't doing exactly as I wanted it to -- still figuring things out. The island is about 4km long and 1.5km wide at its widest.