Geography
Mountains, rivers, oceans and deserts, and the forces that made them.
Featured in Geography
Start with these, then follow the links inside each article wherever they lead.
Mount Everest
Mount Everest (known in Nepali as Sagarmāthā, in Sherpa as Chamolangma, and in Tibetan as Jomolangma/Čhomolangma is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China-Nepal border at its summit.
Sahara
The Sahara is a desert spanning North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeast Africa which empties into the Mediterranean Sea. At 7,088 kilometers long, it is the longest river in the world, although the volume of water it carries is much smaller than other major rivers such as the Amazon or the Congo.
Amazon River
The Amazon River in South America is the largest river in the world by discharge volume of water, and the second-longest or longest river system in the world, a title which is disputed with the Nile. For nearly a century, the headwaters of the Apurímac River on Nevado Mismi in Peru had been considered the Amazon basin's most distant source, until a 2014 study found the farthest source to be the headwaters of the Mantaro River on the Cordillera Rumi Cruz in Peru.
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya, is a mountain range in Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the highest peaks on Earth, including the highest, Mount Everest.
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It stretches from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.
Antarctica
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole.
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide and attains a depth of over a mile (6,093 feet or 1,857 meters).
Mariana Trench
The Mariana Trench is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth, located in the western Pacific Ocean, about 200 kilometers east of the Mariana Islands. It is crescent-shaped and measures about 2,550 km (1,580 mi) in length and 69 km (43 mi) in width.
Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic island country between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Europe and North America. It is Europe's westernmost and most sparsely populated country.
Andes
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (Spanish: Cordillera de los Andes; Quechua: Anti) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 8,900 kilometres (5,500 mi) long and 200 to 700 kilometres (120 to 430 mi) wide (widest between 18°S and 20°S latitude) and has an average height of about 4,000 metres (13,000 ft).
Great Rift Valley
The Great Rift Valley is a series of contiguous geographic depressions, approximately 6,500 kilometres (4,000 mi) in total length, which, in its original definition, runs from "the plains of northern Syria" in the north, through the Red Sea, to Mozambique in the south. The term remains in use in the fields of geography, zoology, ecology, paleontology and other disciplines, but it is now rarely used in geology where the term "Afro-Arabian Rift System" is preferred, which describes the series of geological structures that have given rise to the geographical feature.
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa.
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west (with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary) to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states since the lengthy conquest of Siberia, which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in 1582 and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778.
Ring of Fire
The Ring of Fire is a tectonic belt of earthquakes and volcanoes. It is about 40,000 km (25,000 mi) long and up to about 500 km (310 mi) wide, and surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean.
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea, also known by other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is a rift lake and the deepest lake in the world. It is situated in southern Siberia, Russia, between the federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Republic of Buryatia to the southeast.
Patagonia
Patagonia is a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes mountains, featuring lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers in the west, and deserts, tablelands, and steppes to the east.
Congo River
The Congo River, formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second-longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the third largest river in the world by discharge volume, following the Amazon and Ganges-Brahmaputra rivers. It is the world's deepest recorded river, with measured depths of around 220 m.
Alps
The Alps are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately 1,200 km (750 mi) across several Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. The Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin.
Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert is a desert plateau on the Pacific coast of South America, stretching along a 1,600-kilometre-long (1,000-mile) strip of land in northern Chile, west of the Andes. It covers an area of 105,000 km2 (41,000 mi2), rising to 128,000 km2 (49,000 mi2) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included.
Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park is a national park of the United States located mainly in the northwest corner of the state of Wyoming, with small portions extending into Montana and Idaho. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular.
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is made possible by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water.
Continent
A continent is any of several large terrestrial geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria.
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the U.S. after the Missouri.
Yangtze
The Yangtze River, Yangzi River or Chang Jiang is the longest river in China and the third-longest river in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows for 6,236 kilometers, including the Dam Qu River, the longest source of the Yangtze, in a generally easterly direction to the East China Sea.
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch 3,000 mi in a straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Canada, to New Mexico in the Southwestern United States.
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about 85,133,000 square kilometers. It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area.
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2 or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east.
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and is the largest of the kingdom's three constituent parts by land area, the others being Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenland are citizens of Denmark.
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro is a large dormant volcano in Tanzania. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world, at 5,895 m (19,341 ft) above sea level and 4,900 m (16,100 ft) above its plateau base.
Gobi Desert
The Gobi Desert is a large, cold desert and grassland region in southern Mongolia and North China. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world.
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada-United States border. The five lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario.
Volcano
A volcano is a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, and because most of Earth's plate boundaries are underwater, most volcanoes are found underwater.
Glacier
A glacier is a persistent body of natural ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries.
Map projection
In cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitude, of locations from the surface of the globe are transformed to coordinates on a plane.
Guides in Geography
How mountains form
Colliding plates, volcanoes and slow erosion: the forces that raise the Himalayas and wear the Appalachians down.
Rivers and river systems
How rivers carve valleys, build deltas and support the cities that grew up along their banks.
Deserts of the world
Not all deserts are hot or sandy. What makes a desert, where they form and how life survives in them.
Reading maps: scale, projection and coordinates
Why every flat map of a round Earth distorts something, and how latitude, longitude and scale let you find any place.
Climate zones and biomes
Why the world is divided into tundra, taiga, grassland, desert and rainforest, and what decides which one you live in.
Population and cities
How the world's population reached eight billion, why birth rates fall, and why most people now live in cities.