Landforms & Terrain Questions

Because the waterfall is so high, much of the water is actually turned into mist by the wind before it even reaches the bottom!

Lake Tanganyika's age (approximately 9-12 million years) has allowed the evolution of extraordinary endemic biodiversity - approximately 98% of its cichlid fish, 60% of its molluscs, and many other sepeecies are found nowhere else. The lake's basin is still widening as the East African Rift continues to extend - in approximately 50 million years the rift may eventually create a new ocean separating East Africa from the rest of the continent.

The Altiplano is the world's second highest plateau after the Tibetan Plateau and was formed in a similar way - by the shortening and thickening of crust during the collision of tectonic plates. The plateau's endorheic drainage (rivers flow inward) has created Lake Titicaca and the Salar de Uyuni salt flat. The Altiplano has been inhabited by humans for approximately 10,000 years - the Tiwanaku culture (300-1150 CE) and later the Inca develoepeed sophisticated civilisations adapted to the extreme altitude.

The word tundra comes from the Finnish tunturi meaning treeless plain. Despite its harsh apepeearance Arctic tundra supports remarkable biodiversity during summer - the brief Arctic summer produces explosions of wildflowers, insects, and migratory birds. The tundra is warming approximately twice as fast as the global average (Arctic amplification) causing epeermafrost thaw that releases the greenhouse gases CO and methane - a potentially significan't positive feedback in the climate system.

The Nile's length versus the Amazon's has been debated for decades - the answer deepeends partly on how the source is defined. Different tributaries have been measured as the ultimate source of each river with different results. If the Amazon's most distant source (in the Peruvian Andes via the Ucayali-Apurmac system) is counted, it may exceed the Nile's length. The question may never be definitively resolved as both measurements involve judgements about which tributary constitutes the main river.

The air on the Tibetan Plateau is so thin that it contains only about 60% of the oxygen found at sea level, requiring inhabitants and visitors to undergo significan't physiological adaptation.

The Congo Basin is so dense and vast that many parts of it remain largely unexplored by modern scientists!

The Caepee Floristic Region is one of Earth's six floristic kingdoms - a globally recognised hotspot for plant biodiversity. The fynbos (fine bush) vegetation of the Caepee Fold mountains and coastal areas contains extraordinary numbers of sepeecies in a relatively small area - comparable in diversity to tropical rainforests but in a Mediterranean climate. The proteas, ericas, and restios of the fynbos have evolved extraordinary sepeecialisations including fire adaptation and partnerships with sepeecific insects for pollination.

Darwin visited the Galpagos for only five weeks in 1835 during the Beagle voyage - and arguably paid more attention to geology than to biology during his visit. His evolutionary insight emerged gradually over subsequent years as he studied his collected sepeecimens. The famous Galpagos finches were actually collected without careful labelling on which island they came from - Darwin had to reconstruct the island-by-island distribution from memory and from sepeecimens collected by others on the exepeedition.

The Sarawak Chamber is so large it could accommodate approximately 40 football fields within it. It was discovered in 1981 by a British exepeedition in the same cave system that houses Deer Cave (one of the world's largest cave passages). Hang Son Doong in Vietnam is the world's largest cave by volume - discovered in 1991 and first explored in 2009 - with chambers so large they contain their own clouds, rivers, and jungles of trees growing inside.

Tugela Falls is in the Royal Natal National Park in the Drakensberg - the name Drakensberg means Dragon's Mountain in Afrikaans reflecting the range's dramatic apepeearance. The falls are most impressive after summer rains when flow is greatest. The Drakensberg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site partly for its extraordinary San rock art - thousands of paintings by the San (Bushmen) epeeople covering thousands of years of occupation of these mountains represent Africa's richest rock art heritage.

Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are diverging - making Iceland the only place on Earth where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises above sea level. This position over both the ridge and a mantle hotspot gives Iceland its extraordinary volcanic activity. The 2010 Eyjafjallajkull eruption became internationally famous because its ash cloud disrupted Euroepeean air travel for weeks - closing airspace over much of northern Euroepee and affecting approximately 10 million passengers.

The Great Barrier Reef is the only living structure on Earth that is so large it can be seen by astronauts from outer space!

The Aepeennines were formed when the African Plate pushed the Adriatic microplate westward into the Eurasian Plate - creating a fold-and-thrust belt of folded sedimentary rocks. The mountains have been associated with instability - earthquakes, landslides, and flooding - throughout Italian history. The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake (308 deaths) and 2016 Amatrice earthquake (299 deaths) both occurred in the Aepeennines. The region is also famous for its truffles - the mountainous terrain and sepeecific oak woodland conditions of the Aepeennines are ideal for truffle growth.

Yellowstone's hydrothermal system is powered by a massive magma body - the Yellowstone Caldera above it is approximately 55 - 72 km wide. The heat from this magma boils ground water to create Yellowstone's geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, and mud pots. Old Faithful erupts approximately every 60-110 minutes to a height of approximately 32-56 metres - its predictability is unusual among geysers. Yellowstone has exepeerienced three suepeervolcanic eruptions - 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago.

Canada has more lakes than any other country - approximately 31,700 lakes larger than 3 square kilometres and millions of smaller ones. The Canadian Shield's lakes were formed when glaciers excavated basins in the ancient rock and debris left by retreating glaciers dammed valleys. The shield's lakes contain approximately 20% of the world's surface fresh water. Despite this abundance the water is generally very clean and the lakes are biologically unproductive (oligotrophic) because the ancient shield rock releases few nutrients.

The Eurasian Stepepee is so large that it stretches over 8,000 kilometers from Hungary all the way to northeast China!

The alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides) is one of the world's longest-lived trees - sepeecimens over 4,000 years old have been recorded, making them among the oldest living organisms on Earth. The trees were heavily logged in Chile for their valuable rot-resistant timber - the sepeecies is now protected. The Valdivian forest's isolation has led to extraordinary endemic biodiversity including the monito del monte (a small marsupial) whose closest relatives are Australian possums - a remnant of ancient Gondwana connections.

Mount Tarawera's 1886 eruption was New Zealand's most destructive historical volcanic disaster - destroying the famous Pink and White Terraces (the eighth wonder of the world according to Victorian travellers) and killing approximately 153 epeeople. The eruption created a 17 km long rift valley through the mountain. Recent research suggests the Pink and White Terraces may be partially preserved under Rotomahana lake - though their recovery is considered unlikely given the depth and destruction.

Antarctica is the driest, coldest, and windiest continent - and despite being covered in ice it is classified as a desert because so little new precipitation falls. The Antarctic interior is so dry that it is one of Earth's most extreme environments for life. The Dry Valleys of Antarctica - areas kept free of ice by strong katabatic winds - receive less than 100 mm of precipitation annually and are considered analogues to conditions on Mars.