Island / Isolated Landmass (Distant View)
A landmass seen across open water from a distance — the whole shape reads as a single silhouette or outline against sky and sea, not a close-up of any particular ground surface. Diagnostic feature is exactly that remove: enough water visible in the foreground that the landmass is clearly a destination or landmark, not the immediate setting. Cover Type is necessarily approximate at this distance — what actually shows is overall color and outline (dark and rocky, green and low, white and ice-capped), not close-up vegetation detail. Excludes floating ice: an ice floe or iceberg has no ground beneath it at all, and belongs with the Grab Bag, not here, whatever it shares compositionally with a real landmass.
Bare Rock / Non-Vegetated
A single landmass silhouette rising out of open water, seen from far enough off that only its overall shape and color register, not any ground-level detail.
Temperate
Setting: Coastal
Candidate: The Paps of Jura, Inner Hebrides, Scotland — unverified, for your own research and confirmation before use.
| Pale quartzite scree cones, genuinely used as a sailing landmark — documented as visible from as far as the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland on a clear day. About as diagnostic a distant silhouette as exists. |
Tropical
Setting: Coastal
Candidate: Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles — unverified, for your own research and confirmation before use.
| Imperfect Cover Type fit, flagged rather than papered over: a true raised coral atoll (four islands ringing a lagoon, not a volcanic peak with a fringing reef like Bora Bora, which isn’t technically an atoll) does carry real scrub vegetation, not bare rock — included anyway since it’s the single clearest real example of the tropical-atoll silhouette this row exists to capture. |
Arctic / Subarctic
Setting: Coastal
Candidate: Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway — unverified, for your own research and confirmation before use.
| A genuine solid landmass — glaciated rock, not floating ice — named 'pointed mountains' for its jagged skyline. Distinguish deliberately from an ice floe or iceberg, which have no ground under them at all and don’t belong on this page. |