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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  UNESCO World Heritage plaque at Doñana National Park in Andalucía, Spain

  
  
  
  A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the UNESCO. World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, scientific or other forms of significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity".
  
  To be selected, a World Heritage Site is nominated by their host country and determined by the international committee to be a unique landmark which is geographically and historically identifiable and having a special cultural or physical significance. For example, World Heritage Sites might be ancient ruins or historical structures, buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, monuments, mountains or wilderness areas. (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...)
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  World Rugby is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international competitions, such as the World Rugby Sevens Series, the Rugby World Cup Sevens, the World Under 20 Championship, and the Pacific Nations Cup.
  
  World Rugby's headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland. Its membership now comprises 120 national unions. Each member country must also be a member of one of the six regional unions into which the world is divided: Africa, North America, Asia, Europe, South America, and Oceania. (Full article...)
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  The aircraft shown here, Chicago, led the first round the world flight in 1924.

  
  The first aerial circumnavigation of the world was completed in 1924 by four aviators from an eight-man team of the United States Army Air Service, the precursor of the United States Air Force. The 175-day journey covered over 26,345 miles (42,398 km). The team generally traveled east to west, around the northern-Pacific Rim, through to South Asia and Europe and back to the United States. Airmen Lowell H. Smith and Leslie P. Arnold, and Erik H. Nelson and John Harding Jr. made the trip in two single-engined open-cockpit Douglas World Cruisers (DWC) configured as floatplanes for most of the journey. Four more flyers in two additional DWC began the journey but their aircraft crashed or were forced down. All airmen survived. (Full article...)
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  Sand and dunes of the Libyan Desert

  
  A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the land surface of the Earth is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the polar regions, where little precipitation occurs, and which are sometimes called polar deserts or "cold deserts". Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location.
  
  Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks, which consequently break in pieces. Although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter, and the resulting fragments and rubble strewn over the desert floor are further eroded by the wind. This picks up particles of sand and dust, which can remain airborne for extended periods – sometimes causing the formation of sand storms or dust storms. Wind-blown sand grains striking any solid object in their path can abrade the surface. Rocks are smoothed down, and the wind sorts sand into uniform deposits. The grains end up as level sheets of sand or are piled high in billowing sand dunes. Other deserts are flat, stony plains where all the fine material has been blown away and the surface consists of a mosaic of smooth stones, often forming desert pavements, and little further erosion takes place. Other desert features include rock outcrops, exposed bedrock and clays once deposited by flowing water. Temporary lakes may form and salt pans may be left when waters evaporate. There may be underground sources of water, in the form of springs and seepages from aquifers. Where these are found, oases can occur. (Full article...)
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  Painting of a turn-of-century trading fair, Hessisches Volksfest (Hessian Folk Festival), 1887, Louis Toussaint (1826–1887), Öl auf Leinwand.

  
  Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures. The idea of cultural globalization emerged in the late 1980s, but was diffused widely by Western academics throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. For some researchers, the idea of cultural globalization is reaction to the claims made by critics of cultural imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s. (Full article...)
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  An early nuclear power plant that used atomic energy to generate electricity

  
  The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the Trinity test in New Mexico, on 16 July 1945, during World War II. Although nuclear chain reactions had been hypothesized in 1933 and the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (Chicago Pile-1) had taken place in December 1942, the Trinity test and the ensuing bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II represented the first large-scale use of nuclear technology and ushered in profound changes in sociopolitical thinking and the course of technological development.
  
  While atomic power was promoted for a time as the epitome of progress and modernity, entering into the nuclear power era also entailed frightful implications of nuclear warfare, the Cold War, mutual assured destruction, nuclear proliferation, the risk of nuclear disaster (potentially as extreme as anthropogenic global nuclear winter), as well as beneficial civilian applications in nuclear medicine. It is no easy matter to fully segregate peaceful uses of nuclear technology from military or terrorist uses (such as the fabrication of dirty bombs from radioactive waste), which complicated the development of a global nuclear-power export industry right from the outset. (Full article...)

General images -

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

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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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  Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
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  The Pantheon, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church
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  Hagia Sophia, Istanbul – a symbol of Byzantine civilization
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  A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
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  Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
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  Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong, 1969 (from History of Earth)
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  Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 1945
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  Cuneiform inscription, Sumer, Mesopotamia, 26th century BCE
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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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  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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  Empires of the world in 1898
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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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  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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  Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
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  Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (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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  First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
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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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  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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  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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  Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of 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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  An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of 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)
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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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  Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
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  A High Desert storm in the Mojave (from 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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  Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.
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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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  Relief of Earth's crust (from Earth)
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  Notre-Dame de Paris, France
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  Scientific worldview. (from World)
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  Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
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  Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
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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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  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 ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
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  James Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.
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  St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
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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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  Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
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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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  A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (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 pillar at Göbekli Tepe
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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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  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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  Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
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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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  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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  Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
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  Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
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  Wittenberg, birthplace of Protestantism (from Human history)
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  Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
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  Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
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  Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
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  Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
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  Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
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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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  Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
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  Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
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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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  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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  Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
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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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  Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
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  Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE
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  Moai, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
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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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  A Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
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  Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale (from History of Earth)
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  Ajloun Castle, Jordan
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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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  Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme in World War I
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  Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
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  Maya observatory, Chichen Itza, Mexico
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  Pillar erected by India's Maurya Emperor Ashoka
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  Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from 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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  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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  Venus figurine, Germany, c. 37,500 BCE
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  Cave paintings, Lascaux, France, c. 17,000 BCE
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  View of Earth from the Moon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (from Earth)
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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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  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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  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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  A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (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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  Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
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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)

Megacities of the world -

Guangzhou is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about 120 km (75 mi) north-northwest of Hong Kong and 145 km (90 mi) north of Macau, Guangzhou has a history of over 2,200 years and was a major terminus of the Silk Road.

The port of Guangzhou serves as transportation hub and Guangzhou is one of China's three largest cities. For a long time it was the only Chinese port accessible to most foreign traders. Guangzhou was captured by the British during the First Opium War and no longer enjoyed a monopoly after the war; consequently it lost trade to other ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, but continued to serve as a major Entrepôt. Due to a high urban population and large volumes of port traffic, Guangzhou is classified as a Large-Port Megacity, the largest type of port city in the world. Following the Second Battle of Chuenpi in 1841, the Treaty of Nanking was signed between Sir Robert Peel on behalf of Queen Victoria and Lin Zexu on behalf of Emperor Xuanzong and has ceded Hong Kong to the United Kingdom on 26 January 1841 after the agreement of the Convention of Chuenpi. Due to worldwide travel restrictions at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, the major airport of Guangzhou, briefly became the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic in 2020. (Full article...)

Did you know -

• ... that after being hijacked, United Airlines Flight 175 almost had two mid-air collisions with other aircraft before crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center?
• ... that the 2009 book Where Heaven and Earth Meet introduced the term "Sacred Esplanade" as a politically neutral term for the religious site in Jerusalem known as al-Haram al-Sharif or the Temple Mount?
• ... that the visual design of Overwatch character Widowmaker was inspired by World of Warcraft character Sylvanas Windrunner?
• ... that the bones of Dante were to be taken to Mussolini's intended last stand against the Allies at the Valtellina Redoubt?
• ... that British Turk Hüseyin Er won world and European championships with the Turkey national deaf football team?
• ... that the abandoned New World Department Store in Bangkok became home to thousands of fish?
• ... that a Brazilian priest died while attempting to break the cluster-ballooning world record, in order to fund a spiritual rest-stop for truckers?
• ... that giant bucket hats were placed around Wales and in Qatar to mark Wales' football team reaching the 2022 FIFA World Cup?

Countries of the world -

Ireland (Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] ^ⓘ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. Around 2.1 million of the country's population of 5.15 million people reside in the Greater Dublin Area. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann; an upper house, Seanad Éireann; and an elected president (Uachtarán) who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach (Prime Minister, literally "Chief"), who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President, who appoints other government ministers.

The Irish Free State was created with Dominion status in 1922, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In 1937, a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and effectively became a republic, with an elected non-executive president. It was officially declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in 1955. It joined the European Communities (EC), the predecessor of the European Union (EU), in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the 20th century, but the 1980s and 1990s saw the British and Irish governments working with Northern Irish parties to resolve the conflict that had become known as the Troubles. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Irish government have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North/South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement. (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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  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...)
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  Ludaš Lake is a shallow lake in the province of Vojvodina in northern Serbia, near the city of Subotica. It is a special natural preserve and, since 1977, designated as a swamp area of international significance by the Ramsar Convention.

  
  Protected areas cover around 5% of the territory of Serbia. The Law on the Protection of the Nature defines these categories of protected areas:

  • Strict nature reserve — Area of unmodified natural features with representative ecosystems set aside for the preservation of its biodiversity and for scientific research and monitoring.
  • Special nature reserve — Area of unmodified or slightly modified natural features of great importance due to uniqueness and rarity which includes the habitats of endangered species set aside for the preservation of its unique features, education, limited tourism and for scientific research and monitoring.
  • National park — Area with large number of diverse ecosystems of national value, with outstanding natural features and/or cultural heritage set aside for the preservation of its natural resources and for educational, scientific and tourist use.
  • Natural monument — Small unmodified or slightly modified natural feature, object or phenomenon, easily detectable and unique, with unique natural attributes.
  • Protected habitat — Area which includes habitats of one or more wildlife species.
  • Landscape of outstanding features — Area of remarkable appearance with important natural and cultural value.
  • Nature park — Area of well-preserved natural values with preserved natural ecosystems and picturesque landscape set aside for the preservation of biodiversity and for educational, tourist, recreational and scientific use.

  (Full article...)
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  Protected areas of Estonia are regulated by the Nature Conservation Act (Estonian: Looduskaitseseadus), which was passed by the Estonian parliament on April 21, 2004 and entered into force May 10, 2004.
  Overall Estonia has 15403 protected areas covering 21% of the country land and 18% of it marine and coastal territory, including 6 national parks: Lahemaa National Park, Karula National Park, Soomaa National Park,Vilsandi National Park, Matsalu National Park, and Alutaguse National Park (Full article...)
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  Rock carvings at the Ewaninga Rock Carvings Conservation Reserve

  
  The protected areas of the Northern Territory consists of protected areas managed by the governments of the Northern Territory and Australia and private organisations with a reported total area of 335,527 square kilometres (129,548 sq mi) being 24.8% of the total area of the Northern Territory of Australia. (Full article...)
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  Protected areas of Ukraine (Ukrainian: охоронні території) are special areas of Ukraine established with the goal of protecting the natural and cultural heritage of the country from excessive changes as a result of human activity. The protection of the areas is the responsibility of the government of Ukraine, specifically the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
  
  Ukraine has several categories of protected areas of Ukraine and the protected areas include: (Full article...)
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  National parks of Victoria State parks of Victoria Marine national parks of Victoria Marine and coastal parks of Victoria Marine sanctuaries of Victoria Other parks of Victoria

(Full article...)

Protected areas of Turkmenistan include nine nature reserves (zapovednik) and 13 sanctuaries (zakaznik) with a total area of 19,750 km² or more than 4% of Turkmenistan's territory. (Full article...)

Map of the Philippine archipelago

In the Philippines, Protected Areas are administered by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)'s Biodiversity Management Bureau under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1992. As of 2020, there are 244 Protected Areas in the Philippines covering a total area of about 7,760,000 hectares (19,200,000 acres) – 15.4% of the Philippines' total area. (Full article...)

The mountain of Stob Binnein lies in the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park.

Many parts of Scotland are protected in accordance with a number of national and international designations because of their environmental, historical or cultural value. Protected areas can be divided according to the type of resource which each seeks to protect. NatureScot has various roles in the delivery of many environmental designations in Scotland, i.e. those aimed at protecting flora and fauna, scenic qualities and geological features. Historic Environment Scotland is responsible for designations that protect sites of historic and cultural importance. Some international designations, such as World Heritage Sites, can cover both categories of site.

The various designations overlap considerably with many protected areas being covered by multiple designations with different boundaries. (Full article...)

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...)

A National Biodiversity Conservation Area (NBCA) is an environmentally protected area in Laos. There are all together 21 different NBCAs in Laos, protecting 29,775 square kilometers. Another 10 NBCAs have been proposed, many of them being treated by authorities as though they were already officially protected. (Full article...)

Kentucky's system of 44 state parks has been referred to as "the nation's finest" and experiences more repeat business annually than those of any other U.S. state. The state's diverse geography provides a variety of environments to experience. From mountain lakes to expansive caves to forests teeming with wildlife, park-goers have their choice of attractions, and they are all within a day's drive of each other.

Unless otherwise specified, data in the following lists are taken from Kentucky State Parks by Bill Bailey. (Full article...)

Tijuca Forest National Park

Protected areas of Brazil included various classes of area according to the National System of Nature Conservation Units (SNUC), a formal, unified system for federal, state and municipal parks created in 2000. (Full article...)

Map of protected areas of the Czech Republic: national parks (grey) and protected landscape areas (green)

There are several types of protected areas of the Czech Republic. The main form of landscape protection is delimitation of special protected areas. All the types of protected areas are determined by law. (Full article...)

The protected areas of South Africa include national parks and marine protected areas managed by the national government, public nature reserves managed by provincial and local governments, and private nature reserves managed by private landowners. Most protected areas are intended for the conservation of flora and fauna. National parks are maintained by South African National Parks (SANParks). A number of national parks have been incorporated in transfrontier conservation areas.

Protected areas may also be protected for their value and importance as historical, cultural heritage or scientific sites. More information on these can be found in the list of heritage sites in South Africa. (Full article...)

Selected world maps

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  1516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
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  The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
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  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
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  United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
• 
  The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
• 
  A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
• 
  Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)
• 
  Time zones of the world
• 
  Mollweide projection of the world

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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Wikimedia

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