Learn geography
Rivers, lakes, seas, coasts, mountains, valleys, deserts, and more—concise explainers and case studies with maps, cross-sections, and quick facts.
The Dead Sea, straddling Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan, is famous for water so dense you float without trying. Beyond the fun photo, its chemistry is unique:…
Far beneath the waves, seawater slips into cracks in new ocean crust, heats up near magma, and blasts back out as mineral-rich hot springs. These are hydrothermal vents.…
The Dead Sea sits in the Jordan Rift Valley at roughly 1,443 feet (440 meters) below sea level, making it Earth’s lowest exposed land. It has no natural…
Stand on a windy headland and scan the coastline: some inlets are open and sweeping, others curl inward like a clasped hand, and a few cut like narrow…
Where Is the Black Sea?It sits at the crossroads of Southeastern Europe and Western Asia. Specifically, it spans roughly 40.9°–46.5° N latitude and 27.5°–41.7° E longitude. In doing…
Oksukon Lake (Tajik: Кӯли Оксукон) is a 3.4 sq mi (8.9 km²) salt-mud lake in Tajikistan’s Asht District, Sughd Region, on the right bank of the Syr Darya…
Imagine plunging over 4,800 feet beneath the surface of a freshwater expanse so vast it spans four countries. Lake Tanganyika holds this spectacular record as the second deepest…
What is an atoll? An atoll is a ring-shaped coral reef, island, or series of islets encircling a central lagoon, formed as volcanic islands gradually subside and reefs…
What is the Valley of Geysers? It’s the world’s second-largest concentration of geysers—about 90 active vents packed into a 3.7-mile canyon—fuelled by heat from Kamchatka’s volcanoes. Nestled in…
If you picture endless dunes when you hear “desert,” you’re only half right. Some deserts are white with ice, not yellow with sand. The key is dryness, not…
