Sri Lanka, formerly called "Ceylon", is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, southeast of the Indian subcontinent, in a strategic location near major Indian Ocean sea lanes. The nation has a total area of 65,610 km², with 64,740 km² of land and 870 km² of water. Its coastline is 1,340 km (830 mi) long. The main island of Sri Lanka has an area of 65,268 km²; it is the twenty-fifth largest island of the world by area. Dozens of offshore islands account for the remaining 342 km² area. The largest offshore island, Mannar Island, leads to Adam's Bridge.
A canyon or gorge is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic timescales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cut through underlying surfaces, eventually wearing away rock layers as sediments are removed downstream. A river bed will gradually reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water into which the river drains. The processes of weathering and erosion will form canyons when the river's headwaters and estuary are at significantly different elevations, particularly through regions where softer rock layers are intermingled with harder layers more resistant to weathering.
A gully is a landform created by running water, eroding sharply into soil, typically on a hillside. Gullies resemble large ditches or small valleys, but are metres to tens of metres in depth and width. When the gully formation is in process, the water flow rate can be substantial, causing a significant deep cutting action into soil.
Terrain or relief involves the vertical and horizontal dimensions of land surface. The term bathymetry is used to describe underwater relief, while hypsometry studies terrain relative to sea level. The Latin word terra means "earth."
A ridge or a mountain ridge is a geographical feature consisting of a chain of mountains or hills that form a continuous elevated crest for some distance. The sides of the ridge slope away from narrow top on either side. The lines along the crest formed by the highest points, with the terrain dropping down on either side, are called the ridgelines. Ridges are usually termed hills or mountains as well, depending on size.
The prevailing wind in a region of the Earth's surface is a surface wind that blows predominantly from a particular direction. The dominant winds are the trends in direction of wind with the highest speed over a particular point on the Earth's surface. A region's prevailing and dominant winds are the result of global patterns of movement in the Earth's atmosphere. In general, winds are predominantly easterly at low latitudes globally. In the mid-latitudes, westerly winds are dominant, and their strength is largely determined by the polar cyclone. In areas where winds tend to be light, the sea breeze/land breeze cycle is the most important cause of the prevailing wind; in areas which have variable terrain, mountain and valley breezes dominate the wind pattern. Highly elevated surfaces can induce a thermal low, which then augments the environmental wind flow
Little River is a 60-mile (97 km) river in Tennessee which drains a 380-square-mile (980 km2) area containing some of the most spectacular scenery in the southeastern United States. The first 18 miles (29 km) of the river are all located within the borders of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The remaining 42 miles (68 km) flow out of the mountains through Blount County to join the Tennessee River at Fort Loudon Lake in Knox County.
A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water, generally on a planet's surface. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, but it includes smaller pools of water such as ponds, wetlands, or more rarely, puddles. A body of water does not have to be still or contained; rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water.
Cloudland Canyon State Park is a 3,485 acres (14.10 km2) Georgia state park located near Trenton and Cooper Heights on the western edge of Lookout Mountain. One of the largest and most scenic parks in Georgia, it contains rugged geology, and offers visitors a range of vistas across the deep gorge cut through the mountain by Sitton Gulch Creek, where the elevation varies from 800 to over 1,800 feet. Views of the canyon can be seen from the picnic area parking lot, in addition to additional views located along the rim trail. At the bottom of the gorge, two waterfalls cascade across layers of sandstone and shale, ending in small pools below.
In xeric lands, a gulch is a deep V-shaped valley formed by erosion. It may contain a small stream or dry creek bed and is usually larger in size than a gully. Sudden intense rainfall upstream may produce flash floods in the bed of the gulch.
Rondout Creek is a 63.3-mile-long (101.9 km) tributary of the Hudson River in Ulster and Sullivan counties, New York, United States. It rises on Rocky Mountain in the eastern Catskills, flows south into Rondout Reservoir, part of New York City's water supply network, then into the valley between the Catskills and the Shawangunk Ridge, where it goes over High Falls and finally out to the Hudson at Kingston, receiving along the way the Wallkill River.
Tussey Mountain is a stratigraphic ridge in central Pennsylvania, United States, trending east of the Bald Eagle, Brush, Dunning and Evitts Mountain ridges. Its southern foot just crosses the Mason–Dixon line near Flintstone, Maryland, running north 130 km (80 mi) to the Seven Mountains of central Pennsylvania, near Tusseyville, making it one of the longest named ridges in this section of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians. The ridge line separates Morrison Cove from the Woodcock Valley and Friends Cove from the Black Valley. Tussey Mountain lies in, and the ridge line forms parts of the borders of, Centre, Blair, Bedford and Huntingdon counties.
The geography of New York state varies widely. Most of New York is dominated by farms, forests, rivers, mountains, and lakes. New York's Adirondack Park is larger than any U.S. National Park in the contiguous United States. Niagara Falls, on the Niagara River as it flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, is a popular attraction. The Hudson River begins near Lake Tear of the Clouds and flows south through the eastern part of the state without draining lakes George or Champlain. Lake George empties at its north end into Lake Champlain, whose northern end extends into Canada, where it drains into the Richelieu River and then the St. Lawrence. Four of New York City's five boroughs are on the three islands at the mouth of the Hudson River: Manhattan Island, Staten Island, and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island.
The Geology of Pennsylvania consists of six distinct physiographic provinces, three of which are subdivided into different sections. Each province has its own economic advantages and geologic hazards and plays an important role in shaping everyday life in the state. They are: the Atlantic Coastal Plain Province, the Piedmont Province, the New England Province, the Ridge and Valley Province, the Appalachian Plateau Province, and the Central Lowlands Province.
Nesquehoning Creek is an east flowing 14.9-mile-long (24.0 km) tributary of the Lehigh River in northeastern Pennsylvania in the United States.
In geography, a defile is a narrow pass or gorge between mountains or hills. The term originates from a military description of a pass through which troops can march only in a narrow column or with a narrow front. On emerging from a defile into open country, soldiers are said to "debouch".
The Kreyenhagen Hills are a range of foothills of the Diablo Range in western Fresno County and Kings County, California. The Kreyenhagen Hills form a long foothill belt in the soft formations between Reef Ridge and Kettleman Plain. They are divided into several groups, each a few miles wide, by streams crossing them at right angles. They meet with the steep face of Reef Ridge, and are distinct from the mountains which begin there. To the northeast the strata form ridge after ridge, parallel to each other, and extend the length of the separate divisions between the main stream valleys. These ridges, appear like a series of waves advancing, toward Reef Ridge, and elsewhere to broken waves, as in a choppy sea. The ridges are slightly asymmetric, the northeast flank being a dip slope and fairly smooth, while the southwest flank is a steeper, strike face that is in many places eroded so as to leave sharp gullies and conical intermediate ridges extending outward. The groups of hillocks so produced bear some resemblance to an encampment of tents or huts, and the name Jacalitos,, may have been applied to Jacalitos Creek owing to this feature of the hills through which it flows. The greatest symmetry of the parallel ridges appear's in the portion of the Kreyenhagen Hills between Jacalitos Creek and Big Tar Canyon, and there the long, straight, smooth troughs between the ridges doubtless gave rise to the name Canoas, meaning trough, applied to Canoas Creek which passes across the central portion of the hills. Kreyenhagen was the name of the family who originally owned the land in the area.
This glossary of geography terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in geography and related fields, which describe and identify spatial dimension, geographic locations, topographical features, natural resources, and the collection, analysis, and visualization of geographic data. For related terms, see Glossary of geology and Glossary of environmental science.
Long Spur is a wildland in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests of western Virginia. The Wilderness Society has designated the area as a "Mountain Treasure," as a special place worthy of protection from logging and road construction.
