Uvea, Wallis and Futuna

The island of Uvea (Wallis) of Wallis and Futuna can be seen in this true-color reflectance image captured on July 13, 2025, by the Multispectral Imager (MSI) instrument aboard the Sentinel-2B satellite.

Wallis and Futuna is a French overseas collectivity which consists of two volcanic island groups in the west-Central Pacific Ocean. It includes Uvea (Wallis Islands), where the capital, Mata'utu, is located, and Futuna and Alofi (Horne Islands).

Uvea is surrounded by a barrier reef with about 20 uninhabited islets, which can be seen in the image above as a brilliant cyan blue ring around the green island. There are sheltered fishing grounds between the island and reef. Uvea's total land area is 29 square miles (76 square km). The maximum elevation is 476 feet (145 meters) at Mount Lulu Fakahega.

Futuna and Alofi, in the image above, is about 125 miles (200 km) southwest of Uvea. Futuna is 18 square miles (46 square km) in area, and Alofi is 7 square miles (18 square km). Futuna's volcanic peaks reach up to 2,493 feet (760 meters) and Alofi's highest elevation is 1,198 feet (365 meters).

The images are from the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project. HLS provides 30-meter resolution, true-color surface reflectance imagery from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and OLI-2 instruments aboard Landsat 8 and 9 and from MSI aboard the ESA Sentinel-2 satellites. Data from the four instruments are processed through a set of algorithms to make the imagery consistent and comparable. This processing includes atmospheric correction, cloud and cloud-shadow masking, spatial co-registration and common gridding, illumination and view angle normalization, and spectral bandpass adjustment.

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