Portal:Geography

The Geography Portal

A physical map of Earth

Geography (from Ancient Greek γεωγραφία geōgraphía; combining gê 'Earth' and gráphō 'write') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."

Origins of many of the concepts in geography can be traced to Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who may have coined the term "geographia" (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC). The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as the title of a book by Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 AD). This work created the so-called "Ptolemaic tradition" of geography, which included "Ptolemaic cartographic theory." However, the concepts of geography (such as cartography) date back to the earliest attempts to understand the world spatially, with the earliest example of an attempted world map dating to the 9th century BCE in ancient Babylon. The history of geography as a discipline spans cultures and millennia, being independently developed by multiple groups, and cross-pollinated by trade between these groups. The core concepts of geography consistent between all approaches are a focus on space, place, time, and scale.

Today, geography is an extremely broad discipline with multiple approaches and modalities. There have been multiple attempts to organize the discipline, including the four traditions of geography, and into branches. Techniques employed can generally be broken down into quantitative and qualitative approaches, with many studies taking mixed-methods approaches. Common techniques include cartography, remote sensing, interviews, and surveying. (Full article...)

Featured article -

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  The Central European borders of Brandenburg–Prussia (blue-green) and the Habsburg monarchy (red) in 1756, after Prussia's seizure of Silesia in the First Silesian War

  
  The Silesian Wars (German: Schlesische Kriege) were three wars fought in the mid-18th century between Prussia (under King Frederick the Great) and Habsburg Austria (under Empress Maria Theresa) for control of the Central European region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland). The First (1740–1742) and Second (1744–1745) Silesian Wars formed parts of the wider War of the Austrian Succession, in which Prussia was a member of a coalition seeking territorial gain at Austria's expense. The Third Silesian War (1756–1763) was a theatre of the global Seven Years' War, in which Austria in turn led a coalition of powers aiming to seize Prussian territory.
  
  No particular event triggered the wars. Prussia cited its centuries-old dynastic claims on parts of Silesia as a casus belli, but Realpolitik and geostrategic factors also played a role in provoking the conflict. Maria Theresa's contested succession to the Habsburg monarchy under the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 provided an opportunity for Prussia to strengthen itself relative to regional rivals such as Saxony and Bavaria. (Full article...)
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  Tutupaca viewed from a southern direction.

  
  Tutupaca is a volcano in the region of Tacna in Peru. It is part of the Peruvian segment of the Central Volcanic Zone, one of several volcanic belts in the Andes. Tutupaca consists of three overlapping volcanoes formed by lava flows and lava domes made out of andesite and dacite, which grew on top of older volcanic rocks. The highest of these is usually reported to be 5,815 metres (19,078 ft) tall and was glaciated in the past.
  
  Several volcanoes in Peru have been active in recent times, including Tutupaca. Their volcanism is caused by the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South America Plate. One of these volcanoes collapsed in historical time, probably in 1802, generating a large debris avalanche with a volume likely exceeding 0.6–0.8 cubic kilometres (0.14–0.19 cu mi) and a pyroclastic flow. The associated eruption was among the largest in Peru for which there are historical records. The volcano became active about 700,000 years ago, and activity continued into the Holocene, but whether there were historical eruptions was initially unclear; some eruptions were instead attributed to the less eroded Yucamane volcano. The Peruvian government plans to monitor the volcano for future activity. Tutupaca features geothermal manifestations with fumaroles and hot springs. (Full article...)
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  Hillsboro (/ˈhɪlzbəroʊ/ HILZ-burr-oh) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Situated in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many high-technology companies, such as Intel, locally known as the Silicon Forest. The population was 106,447 at the 2020 census, making Hillsboro the fifth-most populous city in Oregon.
  
  Settlers founded a community here in 1842, later named after David Hill, an Oregon politician. Transportation by riverboat on the Tualatin River was part of Hillsboro's settler economy. A railroad reached the area in the early 1870s and an interurban electric railway about four decades later. These railways, as well as highways, aided the slow growth of the city to about 2,000 people by 1910 and about 5,000 by 1950, before the arrival of high-tech companies in the 1980s. (Full article...)
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  The canal at Bathampton, near Bath

  
  The Kennet and Avon Canal is a waterway in southern England with an overall length of 87 miles (140 km), made up of two lengths of navigable river linked by a canal. The name is used to refer to the entire length of the navigation rather than solely to the central canal section. From Bristol to Bath the waterway follows the natural course of the River Avon before the canal links it to the River Kennet at Newbury, and from there to Reading on the River Thames. In all, the waterway incorporates 105 locks.
  
  The two river stretches were made navigable in the early 18th century, and the 57-mile (92 km) canal section was constructed between 1794 and 1810. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the canal gradually fell into disuse after the opening of the Great Western Railway. In the latter half of the 20th century the canal was restored in stages, largely by volunteers. After decades of dereliction and much restoration work, it was fully reopened in 1990. The Kennet and Avon Canal has been developed as a popular heritage tourism destination for boating, canoeing, fishing, walking and cycling, and is also important for wildlife conservation. (Full article...)
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  Cannon decorate the quayside of Balfour Harbour on Shapinsay, the round tower in the background is The Douche

  
  Shapinsay (/ˈʃæpɪnziː/, Scots: Shapinsee) is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of mainland Scotland. With an area of 29.5 square kilometres (11.4 sq mi), it is the eighth largest island in the Orkney archipelago. It is low-lying and, with a bedrock formed from Old Red Sandstone overlain by boulder clay, fertile, causing most of the area to be used for farming. Shapinsay has two nature reserves and is notable for its bird life. Balfour Castle, built in the Scottish Baronial style, is one of the island's most prominent features, a reminder of the Balfour family's domination of Shapinsay during the 18th and 19th centuries; the Balfours transformed life on the island by introducing new agricultural techniques. Other landmarks include a standing stone, an Iron Age broch, a souterrain and a salt-water shower.
  
  There is one village on the island, Balfour, from which roll-on/roll-off car ferries sail to Kirkwall on the Orkney Mainland. At the 2011 census, Shapinsay had a population of 307. The economy of the island is primarily based on agriculture with the exception of a few small businesses that are largely tourism-related. A community-owned wind turbine was constructed in 2011. The island has a primary school but, in part due to improving transport links with mainland Orkney, no longer has a secondary school. Shapinsay's long history has given rise to various folk tales. (Full article...)
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  St. Johns River near Astor

  
  The St. Johns River (Spanish: Río San Juan) is the longest river in the U.S. state of Florida and it is the most significant one for commercial and recreational use. At 310 miles (500 km) long, it flows north and winds through or borders twelve counties. The drop in elevation from headwaters to mouth is less than 30 feet (9 m); like most Florida waterways, the St. Johns has a very slow flow speed of 0.3 mph (0.13 m/s), and is often described as "lazy".
  
  Numerous lakes are formed by the river or flow into it, but as a river its widest point is nearly 3 miles (5 km) across. The narrowest point is in the headwaters, an unnavigable marsh in Indian River County. The St. Johns drainage basin of 8,840 square miles (22,900 km²) includes some of Florida's major wetlands. It is separated into three major basins and two associated watersheds for Lake George and the Ocklawaha River, all managed by the St. Johns River Water Management District. (Full article...)
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  Photograph by Mathew Brady, c. 1876

  
  Dom Pedro II (2 December 1825 – 5 December 1891), nicknamed the Magnanimous (Portuguese: O Magnânimo), was the second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years.
  
  Pedro II was born in Rio de Janeiro, the seventh child of Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil and Empress Dona Maria Leopoldina and thus a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza (Portuguese: Bragança). His father's abrupt abdication and departure to Europe in 1831 left the five-year-old as emperor and led to a lonely childhood and adolescence, obliged to spend his time studying in preparation for rule. His experiences with court intrigues and political disputes during this period greatly affected his later character; he grew into a man with a strong sense of duty and devotion toward his country and his people, yet increasingly resentful of his role as monarch. (Full article...)
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  Harrison Wright Falls, 27 feet (8.2 m), at Ricketts Glen State Park

  
  Ricketts Glen State Park is a Pennsylvania state park on 13,193 acres (5,280 ha) in Columbia, Luzerne, and Sullivan counties in Pennsylvania in the United States. Ricketts Glen is a National Natural Landmark known for its old-growth forest and 24 named waterfalls along Kitchen Creek, which flows down the Allegheny Front escarpment from the Allegheny Plateau to the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians. The park is near the borough of Benton on Pennsylvania Route 118 and Pennsylvania Route 487, and is in five townships: Sugarloaf in Columbia County, Fairmount and Ross in Luzerne County, and Colley and Davidson in Sullivan County.
  
  Ricketts Glen's land was once home to Native Americans. From 1822 to 1827, a turnpike was built along the course of PA 487 in what is now the park, where two squatters harvested cherry trees to make bed frames from about 1830 to 1860. The park's waterfalls were one of the main attractions for a hotel from 1873 to 1903; the park is named for the hotel's proprietor, R. Bruce Ricketts, who built the trail along the waterfalls. By the 1890s Ricketts owned or controlled over 80,000 acres (320 km²; 120 sq mi) and made his fortune clearcutting almost all of that land, including much of what is now the park; however he preserved about 2,000 acres (810 ha) of virgin forest in the creek's three glens. The sawmill was at the village of Ricketts, which was mostly north of the park. After his death in 1918, Ricketts' heirs began selling land to the state for Pennsylvania State Game Lands. (Full article...)
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  Battle of Rossbach, unknown artist

  
  The Battle of Rossbach took place on 5 November 1757 during the Third Silesian War (1756–1763, part of the Seven Years' War) near the village of Rossbach (Roßbach), in the Electorate of Saxony. It is sometimes called the Battle of, or at, Reichardtswerben, after a different nearby town. In this 90-minute battle, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, defeated an Allied army composed of French forces augmented by a contingent of the Reichsarmee (Imperial Army) of the Holy Roman Empire. The French and Imperial army included 41,110 men, opposing a considerably smaller Prussian force of 22,000. Despite overwhelming odds, Frederick managed to defeat the Imperials and the French.
  
  The Battle of Rossbach marked a turning point in the Seven Years' War, not only for its stunning Prussian victory, but because France refused to send troops against Prussia again and Britain, noting Prussia's military success, increased its financial support for Frederick. Following the battle, Frederick immediately left Rossbach and marched for 13 days to the outskirts of Breslau. There he met the Austrian army at the Battle of Leuthen; he employed similar tactics to again defeat an army considerably larger than his own. (Full article...)
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  Title page of the first edition of Wright's Certaine Errors in Navigation (1599)

  
  Edward Wright (baptised 8 October 1561; died November 1615) was an English mathematician and cartographer noted for his book Certaine Errors in Navigation (1599; 2nd ed., 1610), which for the first time explained the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection by building on the works of Pedro Nunes, and set out a reference table giving the linear scale multiplication factor as a function of latitude, calculated for each minute of arc up to a latitude of 75°. This was in fact a table of values of the integral of the secant function, and was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts.
  
  Wright was born at Garveston in Norfolk and educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow from 1587 to 1596. In 1589 the college granted him leave after Elizabeth I requested that he carry out navigational studies with a raiding expedition organised by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons. The expedition's route was the subject of the first map to be prepared according to Wright's projection, which was published in Certaine Errors in 1599. The same year, Wright created and published the first world map produced in England and the first to use the Mercator projection since Gerardus Mercator's original 1569 map. (Full article...)
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  SMS Goeben

  
  SMS Goeben was the second of two Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August Karl von Goeben. Along with her sister ship, Goeben was similar to the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann, but larger, with increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret. Goeben and Moltke were significantly larger and better armored than the comparable British Indefatigable class.
  
  Several months after her commissioning in 1912, Goeben, with the light cruiser Breslau, formed the German Mediterranean Division and patrolled there during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, Goeben and Breslau bombarded French positions in North Africa and then evaded British naval forces in the Mediterranean and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 1914, and Goeben became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim, usually shortened to Yavuz. By bombarding Russian facilities in the Black Sea, she brought Turkey into World War I on the German side. The ship operated primarily against Russian forces in the Black Sea during the war, including several inconclusive engagements with Russian battleships. She made a sortie into the Aegean in January 1918 that resulted in the Battle of Imbros, where Yavuz sank a pair of British monitors but was herself badly damaged by mines. (Full article...)
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  Literary Hall, viewed from the south, facing West Main Street in Romney

  
  Literary Hall is a mid-19th-century brick library, building and museum located in Romney, a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the intersection of North High Street (West Virginia Route 28) and West Main Street (U.S. Route 50). Literary Hall was constructed between 1869 and 1870 by the Romney Literary Society.
  
  Founded in 1819, the Romney Literary Society was the first literary organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library. The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute both flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. (Full article...)
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  A Prussian infantry advance during the Battle of Hohenfriedberg, as depicted by Carl Röchling

  
  The Second Silesian War (German: Zweiter Schlesischer Krieg) was a war between Prussia and Austria that lasted from 1744 to 1745 and confirmed Prussia's control of the region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland). The war was fought mainly in Silesia, Bohemia, and Upper Saxony and formed one theatre of the wider War of the Austrian Succession. It was the second of three Silesian Wars fought between Frederick the Great's Prussia and Maria Theresa's Austria in the mid-18th century, all three of which ended in Prussian control of Silesia.
  
  The conflict has been viewed as a continuation of the First Silesian War, which had concluded only two years before. After the Treaty of Berlin ended hostilities between Austria and Prussia in 1742, the Habsburg monarchy's fortunes improved greatly in the continuing War of the Austrian Succession. As Austria expanded its alliances with the 1743 Treaty of Worms, Prussia entered a renewed alliance with Austria's enemies in the League of Frankfurt and rejoined the war, hoping to prevent a resurgent Austria from taking back Silesia. (Full article...)
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  William Speirs Bruce FRSE (1 August 1867 – 28 October 1921) was a British naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer who organised and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (SNAE, 1902–04) to the South Orkney Islands and the Weddell Sea. Among other achievements, the expedition established the first permanent weather station in Antarctica. Bruce later founded the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory in Edinburgh, but his plans for a transcontinental Antarctic march via the South Pole were abandoned because of lack of public and financial support.
  
  In 1892 Bruce gave up his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh and joined the Dundee Whaling Expedition to Antarctica as a scientific assistant. This was followed by Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. In 1899 Bruce, by then Britain's most experienced polar scientist, applied for a post on Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition, but delays over this appointment and clashes with Royal Geographical Society (RGS) president Sir Clements Markham led him instead to organise his own expedition, and earned him the permanent enmity of the geographical establishment in London. Although Bruce received various awards for his polar work, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, neither he nor any of his SNAE colleagues were recommended by the RGS for the prestigious Polar Medal. (Full article...)
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  Combe Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, on the northern edge of the South Downs. It consists of an inner circuit of ditches and banks, incomplete where it meets a steep slope on its north side, and the remains of an outer circuit. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The historian Hadrian Allcroft included the site in his 1908 book Earthwork of England, and in 1930 E. Cecil Curwen listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a paper which attempted to provide the first list of all the causewayed enclosures in England.
  
  The enclosure has been excavated twice: in 1949, by Reginald Musson, and in 1962, by Veronica Seton-Williams, who used it as a training opportunity for volunteers. Charcoal fragments from Musson's dig were later dated to between 3500 and 3300 BC. Musson also found a large quantity of Ebbsfleet ware pottery in one of the ditches. Seton-Williams found three polished stone axes deposited in another ditch, perhaps not long after it had been dug. The site is only 800 m (870 yd) from Butts Brow, another Neolithic enclosure, and the two locations are visible from each other; both sites may have seen Neolithic activity at the same time. (Full article...)

Vital article

Vital articles to understand Geography.

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Land between bodies of water at Point Reyes National Seashore, California

Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land surface is almost entirely covered by regolith, a layer of rock, soil, and minerals that forms the outer part of the crust. Land plays an important role in Earth's climate system, being involved in the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, and water cycle. One-third of land is covered in trees, another third is used for agriculture, and one-tenth is covered in permanent snow and glaciers. The remainder consists of desert, savannah, and prairie. (Full article...)

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Selected pictures

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  Aitoff projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The Aitoff projection is a modified azimuthal map projection first proposed by David A. Aitoff in 1889. Based on the equatorial form of the azimuthal equidistant projection, Aitoff halved longitudes from the central meridian, projected by the azimuthal equidistant, and then stretched the result horizontally into a 2:1 ellipse.
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  Lambert conformal conic projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The Lambert conformal conic projection is a conic map projection used for aeronautical charts, portions of the State Plane Coordinate System, and many national and regional mapping systems. It is one of seven projections introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1772. Conceptually, the projection seats a cone over the sphere of the Earth and projects the surface conformally onto the cone. The cone is unrolled, and the parallel that was touching the sphere is assigned unit scale. By scaling the resulting map, two parallels can be assigned unit scale, with scale decreasing between them and increasing outside them. Unlike other conic projections, no true secant form of this projection exists.
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  Eckert II projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The Eckert II projection is an equal-area pseudocylindrical map projection presented by Max Eckert-Greifendorff in 1906. In the equatorial aspect (where the equator is shown as the horizontal axis) the network of longitude and latitude lines consists solely of straight lines, and the outer boundary has the distinctive shape of an elongated hexagon.
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  Olmec heartland

  Map: Madman2001

  A map of the Olmec heartland, the southern portion of Mexico's Gulf Coast region between the Tuxtla mountains and the Olmec archaeological site of La Venta. It is considered the heartland of the Olmec culture, which was widespread over Mesoamerica from 1400 BCE until roughly 400 BCE.
  
  On this map, yellow dots represent ancient habitation sites, including San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Red dots represent isolated artifact finds unassociated with any ancient town or village, such as the Las Limas Monument 1, the San Martín Pajapan Monument 1, and "The Wrestler".
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  Nautical chart

  Map credit: Fernão Vaz Dourado

  A pre-Mercator nautical chart of West Africa from 1571, by Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado. It is done using the so-called "plane chart model", where observed latitudes and magnetic directions were plotted directly into the plane, with a constant scale, as if the Earth were flat.
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  General Perspective projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The General Perspective projection is a map projection used in cartography in which the Earth is depicted as viewed from a finite distance above its surface. If the view precisely faces the center of the Earth, the projection is a vertical perspective projection; otherwise, it is a tilted perspective projection. Here is shown a vertical perspective from an altitude of 35,786 km over (0°, 90°W), corresponding to a view from geostationary orbit. Due to the horizon as seen from the viewpoint position, the projection always shows less than half of the Earth's surface: in this case neither of the North and South Poles is visible.
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  Waldseemüller map

  Credit: Martin Waldseemüller

  The Waldseemüller map is a map drawn by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller originally published in April 1507. It was one of the first maps to chart latitude and longitude precisely, the first map to use the name "America", and the first to depict the Americas as separate from Asia.
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  Equirectangular projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The equirectangular projection is a simple map projection attributed to Marinus of Tyre, who Ptolemy claims invented the projection about AD 100. The projection maps meridians to vertical straight lines of constant spacing, and circles of latitude to horizontal straight lines of constant spacing. The projection is neither equal area nor conformal. Because of the distortions introduced by this projection, it has few applications beyond base imagery to be reprojected to some more useful projection.
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  Edwards Air Force Base

  Photo credit: NASA

  The world's largest compass rose, drawn on the desert floor at Edwards Air Force Base in California, United States. Painted on the dry lake near Dryden Flight Research Center, it is inclined to magnetic north and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators.
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  Sinusoidal projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The sinusoidal projection is a pseudocylindrical equal-area map projection. Used as early as the 16th century, this projection shows distances accurately along the central meridian and the equator; areas furthest from these lines are the most distorted.
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  Compass rose

  Illustration credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar, after Jorge de Aguiar

  A compass rose, sometimes called a windrose or rose of the winds, is a figure on a compass, map, nautical chart, or monument used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions (north, east, south, and west) and their intermediate points. It is also the term for the graduated markings found on the traditional magnetic compass. Today, a form of compass rose is found on, or featured in, almost all navigation systems, including nautical charts, non-directional beacons, VHF omnidirectional range systems, GPS, and similar equipment.
  
  This picture is an illustration of a compass rose, copied from a 1492 portolan chart by Portuguese navigator and cartographer Jorge de Aguiar, now in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
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  Iberian cartography, 1400–1600

  Map: Jorge de Aguiar

  A portolan chart from 1492, the oldest known signed and dated chart of Portuguese origin. Cartography technologies greatly advanced during the Age of Discovery. Iberian mapmakers in particular focused on practical charts to use as navigational aids. Unlike Spanish maps which were regarded as state secrets, Portuguese ones were used by other countries, and Portuguese cartographers drew upon the skill and knowledge of other cultures as well.
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  Robinson projection

  Map credit: Central Intelligence Agency

  The Robinson projection is a projection of a world map showing the entire Earth at once. It was specifically created in an attempt to find a good compromise to the problem of showing the whole globe as a single flat image. The projection was devised by Arthur H. Robinson in 1963; distortion is severe close to the poles, but quickly declines to moderate levels as latitudes decrease. This Robinson-projection map, with standard parallels of 38°N and 38°S, was produced by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and shows the world as of February 2016.
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  Map of Vatican City

  Map: Thoroe

  A map of Vatican City (click for full resolution), highlighting notable buildings and the Vatican Gardens. The world's smallest independent state and the episcopal see of the Pope, Vatican City is entirely surrounded by the Italian city of Rome. As such, its geography is primarily urban and its climate similar to Italy's.
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  Mercator projection

  Map: Strebe, using Geocart

  The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. Because it represents paths of constant course as straight lines, it long served as the standard map projection for nautical purposes. However, it distorts the size of objects as the latitude increases: thus areas in the mid-latitudes appear significantly larger than their actual size relative to those the equator, and those near the poles are even more exaggerated. Most modern atlases no longer use the Mercator projection for world maps or for areas distant from the equator, preferring other cylindrical projections, or forms of equal-area projection.

Featured biography

Featured biography articles in geography

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Bust of Shen at the Beijing Ancient Observatory

Shen Kuo (Chinese: 沈括; 1031–1095) or Shen Gua, courtesy name Cunzhong (存中) and pseudonym Mengqi (now usually given as Mengxi) Weng (夢溪翁), was a Chinese polymath, scientist, and statesman of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Shen was a master in many fields of study including mathematics, optics, and horology. In his career as a civil servant, he became a finance minister, governmental state inspector, head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality, and also served as an academic chancellor. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang Anshi (1021–1085).

In his Dream Pool Essays or Dream Torrent Essays (夢溪筆談; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of true north in terms of magnetic declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the distance between the pole star and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe for another four hundred years (evidence of German sundials made circa 1450 show markings similar to Chinese geomancers' compasses in regard to declination). (Full article...)

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Special:Nearby

Top 10 WikiProject Geography Popular articles of the month

This following Geography-related articles is a most visited articles of WikiProject Geography, See complete list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography/Popular pages.

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  A map of the United States showing its 50 states, federal district and five inhabited territories. Alaska, Hawaii, and the territories are shown at different scales, and the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from the map.

  
  The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands. Both the states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows states to exercise all powers of government not delegated to the federal government. Each state has its own constitution and government, and all states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state elects two senators, while representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census. Additionally, each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the president of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators in Congress from that state. The federal district does not have representatives in the Senate, but has a non-voting delegate in the House, and it is also entitled to electors in the Electoral College. Congress can admit more states, but it cannot create a new state from territory of an existing state or merge two or more states into one without the consent of all states involved, and each new state is admitted on an equal footing with the existing states. (Full article...)
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  Generation Z (often shortened to Gen Z), also known as Zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years, with the generation most frequently being defined as people born from 1997 to 2012. Most members of Generation Z are the children of younger baby boomers or Generation X. (Full article...)
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  Puerto Rico (Spanish for 'rich port'; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a self-governing Caribbean archipelago and island organized as an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth. Located about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) southeast of Miami, Florida, between the Dominican Republic in the Greater Antilles and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Lesser Antilles, it consists of the eponymous main island and numerous smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. With approximately 3.2 million residents, it is divided into 78 municipalities, of which the most populous is the capital municipality of San Juan, followed by those within the San Juan metropolitan area. Spanish and English are the official languages of the government, though Spanish predominates. (Full article...)
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  The Blue Marble, Apollo 17, December 1972

  
  Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere. Most of Earth's land is at least somewhat humid and covered by vegetation, while large sheets of ice at Earth's polar deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers and atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth has a liquid outer core that generates a magnetosphere capable of deflecting most of the destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation. (Full article...)
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  Map of the Chagos Archipelago

  
  The Chagos Archipelago (/ˈtʃɑːɡəs, -ɡoʊs/) or Chagos Islands (formerly the Bassas de Chagas, and later the Oil Islands) is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres (310 mi) south of the Maldives archipelago. This chain of islands is the southernmost archipelago of the Chagos–Laccadive Ridge, a long submarine mountain range in the Indian Ocean. In its north are the Salomon Islands, Nelsons Island and Peros Banhos; towards its south-west are the Three Brothers, Eagle Islands, Egmont Islands and Danger Island; southeast of these is Diego Garcia, by far the largest island. All are low-lying atolls, save for a few extremely small instances, set around lagoons. (Full article...)
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  River Thames and Tower Bridge with The Shard and Southwark (left), and Tower of London and City of London (right)

  
  London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of 8,866,180 in 2022. The wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a 50-mile (80 km) estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years. Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of the national government and parliament. London grew rapidly in the 19th century, becoming the world's largest city at the time. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has referred to the metropolis around the City of London, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which since 1965 has largely comprised the administrative area of Greater London, governed by 33 local authorities and the Greater London Authority. (Full article...)
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  National Mall

  
  Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with Maryland to its north and east. It was named after George Washington, the first president of the United States. The district is named after Columbia, the female personification of the nation. (Full article...)
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  Cartogram of the world's population in 2018; each square represents 500,000 people.

  
  
  This is a list of countries and dependencies by population. It includes sovereign states, inhabited dependent territories and, in some cases, constituent countries of sovereign states, with inclusion within the list being primarily based on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1. For instance, the United Kingdom is considered a single entity, while the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are considered separately. In addition, this list includes certain states with limited recognition not found in ISO 3166-1. Also given in a percentage is each country's population compared with the world population, which the United Nations estimates at 8.119 billion as of 2024. (Full article...)
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  Dymaxion map of the world with the 30 largest countries and territories by area

  
  This is a list of the world's countries and their dependencies by land, water, and total area, ranked by total area. (Full article...)
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  Generation X (often shortened to Gen X) is the demographic cohort following the Baby Boomers and preceding Millennials. Researchers and popular media often use the mid-1960s as its starting birth years and the late 1970s as its ending birth years, with the generation being generally defined as people born from 1965 to 1980. By this definition and U.S. Census data, there are 65.2 million Gen Xers in the United States as of 2019. Most of Generation X are the children of the Silent Generation and early Baby Boomers; Xers are also often the parents of Millennials and Generation Z. (Full article...)

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