Astronaut Soichi Noguchi captured from ISS Yakushima, Japan.
Yakushima is one of the Ōsumi Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island, 504.88 km2 in area, has a population of 13,178. Access to the island is by hydrofoil ferry, slow car ferry, or by air to Yakushima Airport. Yakushima contains one of the largest tracts of existing Nansei Islands subtropical evergreen forests, an endangered habitat ecoregion. Yakushima’s unique remnant of warm/temperate ancient forest has been a natural World Heritage Site since 1993. In the Wilderness core area (12.19km2) of the World Heritage Site, no record of past tree cutting can be traced. The bedrock of the island is granite, and as such it hosts no active volcanoes. Yakushima’s electricity is more than 50% hydroelectric, and surplus power has been used to produce hydrogen gas in an experiment by Kagoshima University.
The local scenery on the ground is as follows.
Reference: Soichi Noguchi’s Tweet
See earthview photo gallery: LiVEARTH