Portal:World

The World Portal

The world 

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The Blue Marble, a photograph of the planet Earth made on 7 December 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.

The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts.

In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.

In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". (Full article...)

Selected articles -

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  Among the various cradles of civilization is Ancient Egypt. Pictured are the Giza Pyramids.

  
  A cradle of civilization is a location and a culture where civilization was developed independent of other civilizations in other locations. The formation of urban settlements (cities) is the primary characteristic of a society that can be characterized as "civilized". Other characteristics of civilization include a sedentary non-nomadic population, monumental architecture, the existence of social classes and inequality, and the creation of a writing system for communication. The transition from simpler societies to the complex society of a civilization is gradual.
  
  Scholars generally acknowledge six cradles of civilization: Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient India, and Ancient China are believed to be the earliest in Afro-Eurasia (previously called the Old World), while the Caral-Supe civilization of coastal Peru and the Olmec civilization of Mexico are believed to be the earliest in Americas - previously known in Western literature as the New World. All of the cradles of civilization depended upon agriculture for sustenance (except possibly Caral-Supe which may have depended initially on marine resources). All depended upon farmers producing an agricultural surplus to support the centralized government, political leaders, priests, and public works of the urban centers of the early civilizations. (Full article...)
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  Artist's rendition of a fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water.

  The Snowball Earth is a geohistorical hypothesis that proposes during one or more of Earth's icehouse climates, the planet's surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen with no liquid oceanic or surface water exposed to the atmosphere. The most academically referred period of such global glaciation is believed to have occurred sometime before 650 mya during the Cryogenian period.
  
  Proponents of the hypothesis argue that it best explains sedimentary deposits that are generally believed to be of glacial origin at tropical palaeolatitudes and other enigmatic features in the geological record. Opponents of the hypothesis contest the geological evidence for global glaciation and the geophysical feasibility of an ice- or slush-covered ocean, and they emphasize the difficulty of escaping an all-frozen condition. Several unanswered questions remain, including whether Earth was a full snowball or a "slushball" with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water. The snowball-Earth episodes are proposed to have occurred before the sudden radiation of multicellular bioforms known as the Cambrian explosion. The most recent snowball episode may have triggered the evolution of multicellularity. (Full article...)
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  Human symbolic expression developed as prehistoric humans reached behavioral modernity.

  
  Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/ KUL-chər) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location.
  
  Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. (Full article...)
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  IDEC 3, current outright record holder at 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds.

  
  The first around the world sailing record for circumnavigation of the world can be attributed to the surviving crew of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, including the last captain Juan Sebastián Elcano who completed their journey in 1522.
  
  Although not in a single voyage but Magellan was technically the first to circumnavigate the globe since he was killed in the Mactan Islands and while in the Kingdom of Portugal's service, Magellan had already reached the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia on previous voyages traveling east (from 1505 to 1511–1512). By visiting this area again but now traveling west, Magellan achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history. (Full article...)
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  Chart of the world's gross domestic product over the last two millennia

  
  
  The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.
  
  A series of currency devaluations and oil crises in the 1970s led most countries to float their currencies. The world economy became increasingly financially integrated in the 1980s and 1990s due to capital account liberalization and financial deregulation. A series of financial crises in Europe, Asia, and Latin America followed with contagious effects due to greater exposure to volatile capital flows. The global financial crisis, which originated in the United States in 2007, quickly propagated among other nations and is recognized as the catalyst for the worldwide Great Recession. A market adjustment to Greece's noncompliance with its monetary union in 2009 ignited a sovereign debt crisis among European nations known as the Eurozone crisis. The history of international finance shows a U-shaped pattern in international capital flows: high prior to 1914 and after 1989, but lower in between. The volatility of capital flows has been greater since the 1970s than in previous periods. (Full article...)
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  The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada and their allies represented the "First World", while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and their allies represented the "Second World". This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political divisions. Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition of the Third World. Strictly speaking, "Third World" was a political, rather than economic, grouping.
  
  Since most Third World countries were economically poor and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to developing countries as "third-world countries". In political discourse, the term Third World was often associated with being underdeveloped. Some countries in the Eastern Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as Third World. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania, and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotônio dos Santos, and others, the Third World has also been connected to the world-systemic economic division as "periphery" countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic "core". (Full article...)
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  A world map on the Winkel tripel projection,
  a low-error map projection adopted by the National Geographic Society for reference maps

  
  A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of the Earth. While this is true of any map, these distortions reach extremes in a world map. Many techniques have been developed to present world maps that address diverse technical and aesthetic goals.
  
  Charting a world map requires global knowledge of the Earth, its oceans, and its continents. From prehistory through the Middle Ages, creating an accurate world map would have been impossible because less than half of Earth's coastlines and only a small fraction of its continental interiors were known to any culture. With exploration that began during the European Renaissance, knowledge of the Earth's surface accumulated rapidly, such that most of the world's coastlines had been mapped, at least roughly, by the mid-1700s and the continental interiors by the twentieth century. (Full article...)

General images -

The following are images from various world-related articles on Wikipedia.

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  Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme in World War I
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  An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
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  Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
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  Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 1945
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  Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
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  Moai, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
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  Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
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  Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
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  Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
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  Ajloun Castle, Jordan
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  Hagia Sophia, Istanbul – a symbol of Byzantine civilization
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  A 580 million year old fossil of Spriggina floundensi, an animal from the Ediacaran period. Such life forms could have been ancestors to the many new forms that originated in the Cambrian Explosion. (from History of Earth)
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  A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
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  Relief of Earth's crust (from Earth)
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  Scientific worldview. (from World)
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  Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
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  Notre-Dame de Paris, France
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  A pillar at Göbekli Tepe
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  Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
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  Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
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  The pale orange dot, an artist's impression of the early Earth which might have appeared orange through its hazy methane rich prebiotic second atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere at this stage was somewhat comparable to today's atmosphere of Titan. (from History of Earth)
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  Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
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  Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
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  Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7 billion years from now (from Earth)
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  Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
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  Tracy Caldwell Dyson, a NASA astronaut, observing Earth from the Cupola module at the International Space Station on 11 September 2010 (from Earth)
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  Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE
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  An animation of the changing density of productive vegetation on land (low in brown; heavy in dark green) and phytoplankton at the ocean surface (low in purple; high in yellow) (from Earth)
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  The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
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  Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.
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  Artist's impression of Earth during the later Archean, the largely cooled planetary crust and water-rich barren surface, marked by volcanoes and continents, features already round microbialites. The Moon, still orbiting Earth much closer than today and still dominating Earth's sky, produced strong tides. (from History of Earth)
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  Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
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  Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
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  Venus figurine, Germany, c. 37,500 BCE
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  A composite image of Earth, with its different types of surface discernible: Earth's surface dominating Ocean (blue), Africa with lush (green) to dry (brown) land and Earth's polar ice in the form of Antarctic sea ice (grey) covering the Antarctic or Southern Ocean and the Antarctic ice sheet (white) covering Antarctica. (from Earth)
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  James Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.
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  A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
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  Cave paintings, Lascaux, France, c. 17,000 BCE
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  Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
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  Empires of the world in 1898
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  Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
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  "Lucy", the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found. Lucy was only 1.06 m (3 ft 6 in) tall.
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  Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
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  Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
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  Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
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  St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
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  A banded iron formation from the 3.15 Ga Moodies Group, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Red layers represent the times when oxygen was available; gray layers were formed in anoxic circumstances. (from History of Earth)
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  Pillar erected by India's Maurya Emperor Ashoka
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  Geologic map of North America, color-coded by age. From most recent to oldest, age is indicated by yellow, green, blue, and red. The reds and pinks indicate rock from the Archean.
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  First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
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  A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
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  Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
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  Earth's major plates, which are:

  •   Pacific Plate
  •   African Plate
  •   North American Plate
  •   Eurasian Plate
  •   Antarctic Plate
  •   Indo-Australian Plate
  •   South American Plate

  (from Earth)
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  Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong, 1969 (from History of Earth)
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  A Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
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  A view of Earth with different layers of its atmosphere visible: the troposphere with its clouds casting shadows, a band of stratospheric blue sky at the horizon, and a line of green airglow of the lower thermosphere around an altitude of 100 km, at the edge of space (from Earth)
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  Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
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  A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
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  Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.
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  Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
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  Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
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  A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
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  Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale (from History of Earth)
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  Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
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  Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180 Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
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  Earth and the Moon as seen from Mars by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (from Earth)
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  A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
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  Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
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  Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible). Continuing with green and red bands of aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
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  Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
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  Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
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  Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
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  View of Earth from the Moon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (from Earth)
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  Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
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  Lithified stromatolites on the shores of Lake Thetis, Western Australia. Archean stromatolites are the first direct fossil traces of life on Earth. (from History of Earth)
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  Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
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  Cuneiform inscription, Sumer, Mesopotamia, 26th century BCE
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  The Pantheon, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church
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  Maya observatory, Chichen Itza, Mexico
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  Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
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  Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
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  Pale orange dot, an artist's impression of Early Earth, featuring its tinted orange methane-rich early atmosphere (from Earth)
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  A High Desert storm in the Mojave (from Earth)
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  Exaggerated illustration of Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun, marking that the orbital extreme points (apoapsis and periapsis) are not the same as the four seasonal extreme points, the equinox and solstice (from Earth)
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  Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
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  A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
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  An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
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  Wittenberg, birthplace of Protestantism (from Human history)
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  Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
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  Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
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  A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
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  An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)

Megacities of the world -

Hangzhou is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northeastern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, which separates Shanghai and Ningbo. Hangzhou grew to prominence as the southern terminus of the Grand Canal and has been one of China's most renowned and prosperous cities for much of the last millennium. It is a major economic and e-commerce hub within China, and the second biggest city in the Yangtze Delta after Shanghai. Hangzhou is classified as a sub-provincial city and forms the core of the Hangzhou metropolitan area, the fourth-largest in China after Guangzhou-Shenzhen Pearl River agglomeration, Shanghai-Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou conurbation and Beijing. As of 2022, the Hangzhou metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (nominal) of 4 trillion yuan (US$590 billion), making it larger than the economy of Sweden. As of the 2020 Chinese census, it had a total population of 11,936,010 inhabitants. However, its metropolitan area, populated by 13.035 million people over an area of 8,107.9 km² (3,130.5 sq mi), consists of all urban districts in Hangzhou and 3 urban districts of the city of Shaoxing.

Hangzhou has been repeatedly rated as the best commercial city in mainland China by Forbes and the Chinese city with the highest growth potential by the Economist Intelligence Unit. A study conducted by PwC and China Development Research Foundation ranked Hangzhou first among "Chinese Cities of Opportunity". According to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC), the city is classified as a Beta (global second-tier) city, together with Chongqing, Nanjing and Tianjin in China. Hangzhou is also one of the world's top 100 financial centers, according to the Global Financial Centres Index. It boasts the eighth largest GDP among cities in mainland China with a GDP of around 1.8 trillion RMB ($280 billion). Home to the headquarters of large global tech companies such as Alibaba Group, Ant Group, and NetEase, Hangzhou is known for attracting professionals and entrepreneurs who work in information technology. , Hangzhou has the tenth-most Fortune Global 500 headquarters of any city in the world and the fourth-most in China – after Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen – within its city limits. According to the 2020 Hurun Global Rich List, Hangzhou ranks 11th in the world and 6th in China (after Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou) in the number of resident billionaires. (Full article...)

Did you know -

• ... that King Hussein of Jordan gifted an ancient Roman column to New York City for the 1964–65 World's Fair?
• ... that the 2026 FIFA World Cup final will be hosted by a stadium that is cutting corners?
• ... that Joseph Binder influenced modern poster design, creating posters for the 1939 New York World's Fair, the U.S. Army Corps and the American Red Cross?
• ... that there are only about 30 Ancient Egyptian obelisks left standing worldwide—and Italy has more than Egypt?
• ... that both finalists at the 2008 World Snooker Championship made maximum breaks during the tournament?
• ... that the first prayer of "Hilf, Herr meines Lebens", a Christian song written when its author was age 85, is not to be on earth in vain?
• ... that medieval literature scholar Theodore Silverstein's unit in World War II took over the Eiffel Tower to intercept communications of German aircraft?
• ... that in Freedom & Civilization, an anthropological analysis of the concept of freedom, Bronisław Malinowski argues for the creation of a world government?

Countries of the world -

The Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, West Congo, Congo Republic, ROC, or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located on the western coast of Central Africa to the west of the Congo River. It is bordered to the west by Gabon, to the northwest by Cameroon, to the northeast by the Central African Republic, to the southeast by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south by the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, and to the southwest by the Atlantic Ocean.

The region was dominated by Bantu-speaking tribes at least 3,000 years ago, who built trade links leading into the Congo River basin. Congo was formerly part of the French colony of Equatorial Africa. The Republic of the Congo was established on 28 November 1958 and gained independence from France in 1960. It was a Marxist–Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, under the name People's Republic of the Congo. The country has had multi-party elections since 1992, but a democratically elected government was ousted in the 1997 Republic of the Congo Civil War. President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who first came to power in 1979, ruled until 1992 and then again since after his reinstatement. (Full article...)

Wonders of the World -

Eighth Wonder of the World is an unofficial title sometimes given to new buildings, structures, projects, designs or even people that are deemed to be comparable to the seven Wonders of the World. (Full article...)

Related portals

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Protected areas of the world -

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  Total size of protected area of Bosnia and Herzegovina amounts of 57.83694 hectares (142.9182 acres), which is 1,13% of its entire territory. This is a list of areas protected by corresponding levels of the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely at the entity's levels, and with various categorizations. (Full article...)
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  The Protected areas of New South Wales include both terrestrial and marine protected areas. there are 225 national parks in New South Wales. A number established since the late 1970s followed campaigns by local residents and environmentalists.
  
  Based on the Collaborative Australian Protected Area Database (CAPAD) 2020 data there are 2136 separate terrestrial protected areas with a total land area of 7,696,641 hectares (19,018,810 acres) (9.61% of the state's area). CAPAD data also shows 18 marine protected areas with a total area of 348,849 hectares (862,020 acres), covering 39.63% of NSW waters. (Full article...)
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  A list of protected areas of Yemen:
  

  • Bura Community Protected Area
    
  • Hawf National Reserve
    
  • Dhamar Montane Plains Mahjur Traditional Reserve
    
    
  • Jabal Bura Valley Forest National Park
    
  • Ras Isa Marine Park
    
  • Socotra Island Protected Area
    
  • Zuqur Islands Marine National Park

  (Full article...)
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  The main protected areas of Croatia are national parks, nature parks and strict reserves. There are 444 protected areas of Croatia, encompassing 9% of the country. Those include 8 national parks in Croatia, 2 strict reserves and 11 nature parks. The most famous protected area and the oldest national park in Croatia is the Plitvice Lakes National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Velebit Nature Park is a part of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. The strict and special reserves, as well as the national and nature parks, are managed and protected by the central government, while other protected areas are managed by counties. In 2005, the National Ecological Network was set up, as the first step in preparation of the EU accession and joining of the Natura 2000 network.
  
  The total area of all national parks in the country is 994 km² (384 sq mi), of which 235 km² (91 sq mi) is sea surface. Each of the national parks is maintained by a separate institution, overseen and funded by the government ministry of nature conservation and spatial development. The State Institute for Nature Protection provides centralized oversight and expertise. (Full article...)
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  Redwood grove in Redwood National Park

  According to the California Protected Areas Database (CPAD), in the state of California, United States, there are over 14,000 inventoried protected areas administered by public agencies and non-profits. In addition, there are private conservation areas and other easements. They include almost one-third of California's scenic coastline, including coastal wetlands, estuaries, beaches, and dune systems. The California State Parks system alone has 270 units and covers 1.3 million acres (5,300 km²), with over 280 miles (450 km) of coastline, 625 miles (1,006 km) of lake and river frontage, nearly 18,000 campsites, and 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of hiking, biking, and equestrian trails.
  
  Obtaining an accurate total of all protected land in California and elsewhere is a complex task. Many parcels have inholdings, private lands within the protected areas, which may or may not be accounted for when calculating total area. Also, occasionally one parcel of land is included in two or more inventories. Over 90% of Yosemite National Park for example, is listed both as wilderness by the National Wilderness Preservation System, and as national park land by the National Park Service. The Cosumnes River Preserve is an extreme example, owned and managed by a handful of public agencies and private landowners, including the Bureau of Land Management, the County of Sacramento and The Nature Conservancy. Despite the difficulties, the CPAD gives the total area of protected land at 49,294,000 acres (199,490 km²), or 47.05% of the state (not including easements); a considerable amount for the most populous state in the country. (Full article...)
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  The Australian Capital Territory as of 2014 contains 46 separate protected areas with a total land area of 1,302 km² (503 sq mi) or 55.5% of the territory's area, and which managed by Territory and Municipal Services of the ACT government: (Full article...)
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  Cape Spencer Lighthouse, Innes National Park

  
  Protected areas of South Australia, consisting of protected areas located within South Australia and its immediate onshore waters and which are managed by South Australian Government agencies. As of 2018, South Australia contained 359 separate protected areas declared under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972, the Crown Land Management Act 2009 and the Wilderness Protection Act 1992. Together, they cover a total land area of 211,387.48 km² (81,617.16 sq mi) or 21.5% of the state's area. (Full article...)
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  Protected areas of Tamil Nadu cover an area of 3,305 km² (1,276 sq mi), constituting 2.54% of the geographic area and 15% of the 22,643 km² (8,743 sq mi) recorded forest area of the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. It ranks 14th among all the states and union territories of India in terms of total protected area.
  
  Protected areas in South India were created from private hunting grounds of the erstwhile Maharajas of the princely states. Mudumalai National Park was established in 1940 and was the first modern wildlife sanctuary in South India. The protected areas are administered by the Ministry of Environment and Forests of Government of India and the Tamil Nadu Forest Department. (Full article...)
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  There are four categories of protected areas in India, constituted under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Tiger reserves consist of areas under national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. There are 53 tiger reserves in India. the protected areas of India cover 173,629.52 square kilometres (67,038.73 sq mi), roughly 5.28% of the total geographical area of the country. (Full article...)
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  The sun over the Lake Niassa Reserve

  
  Protected areas in Mozambique are known as conservation areas, and are currently grouped into national parks, national reserves, forest reserves, wildlife utilisation areas (coutadas), community conservation areas, and private game farms (fazendas de bravio). There are also a number of areas that have been declared as protected areas under a variety of different legislation, which for reasons of simplicity are here grouped together as "other protected areas." Under the Conservation Law of 2014 (Law 16/2014 of June 20), protected areas will need to be reclassified into a much more flexible series of new categories which are closer to the international system used by the IUCN. International initiatives such as transfrontier parks are grouped at the end of the page. (Full article...)
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  The state of Johor in Malaysia is noted for its national parks and forest reserves which preserve virgin rainforests known for its biodiversity and endangered species of animals.
  Mangrove swamps and coral reefs are also protected within these parks. (Full article...)
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  The protected areas of Kerala include a wide range of biomes, extending east from the coral reefs, estuaries, salt marshes, mangroves beaches of the Arabian Sea through the tropical moist broadleaf forests of the Malabar Coast moist forests to the North Western Ghats moist deciduous forests and South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests to South Western Ghats montane rain forests on the western border of Tamil Nadu in the Western Ghats. Most protected areas throughout its 14 districts are under the stewardship of the Kerala Forest Department and like all other protected areas of India receive support from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (India). (Full article...)
• 

  

  Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

  
  The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation. , the 42,826 protected areas covered 1,235,486 km² (477,024 sq mi), or 13 percent of the land area of the United States. This is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world. The U.S. also had a total of 871 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,240,000 sq mi (3,200,000 km²), or 26 percent of the total marine area of the United States. (Full article...)
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  Desert landscape in Qatar

  
  
  Protected areas of Qatar include:
  

  • Al Reem Biosphere Preserve (designated in 2007) is part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves in the Arab States
  • Al Shahaniyah Park in Al-Shahaniya
  • Al Thakira Nature Reserve in Al Thakhira
  • Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation
  • Dahl Al Hammam Park, a sinkhole in Doha (entrance to the hole is now closed to the public)
    
  • Khor Al Adaid Natural Reserve in Khor Al Adaid
  • Khor Al Udeid Fish Sanctuary
    
  • Mudhlem Cave in Mukaynis
  • Musfer Sinkhole in Salwa
  • Ras Abrouq Nature Reserve (also known as Bir Zekreet (Zekreet Beach)) in Ras Abrouq
  • Ras Ushairij Gazelle Conservation Park
    
  • Umm Tais National Park

  (Full article...)
• 
  Cadw is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government which manages historical buildings and ancient monuments in Wales. (Full article...)

Selected world maps

• 
  Only a few of the largest large igneous provinces appear (coloured dark purple) on this geological map, which depicts crustal geologic provinces as seen in seismic refraction data
• 
  The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
• 
  1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
• 
  Mollweide projection of the world
• 
  The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
• 
  United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
• 
  A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
• 
  Time zones of the world
• 
  Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)

World records

• List of Olympic records in athletics
• List of world records in athletics
• List of junior world records in athletics
• List of world records in masters athletics
• List of world youth bests in athletics
• List of IPC world records in athletics
• List of world records in canoeing
• List of world records in chess
• List of cycling records
• List of world records in track cycling
• List of world records in finswimming
• List of world records in juggling
• List of world records in rowing
• List of world records in speed skating
• List of world records in swimming
• List of IPC world records in swimming
• List of world records in Olympic weightlifting

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