1.
Lake Tanganyika
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Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is the second oldest freshwater lake in the world, second largest by volume, the lake is divided among four countries – Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Zambia, with Tanzania and DRC possessing the majority of the lake. The water flows into the Congo River system and ultimately into the Atlantic Ocean, the name apparently refers to Tanganika, the great lake spreading out like a plain, or plain-like lake. Lake Tanganyika is situated within the Albertine Rift, the branch of the East African Rift. It is the largest rift lake in Africa and the second largest lake by volume in the world and it is the deepest lake in Africa and holds the greatest volume of fresh water, accounting for 18% of the worlds available fresh water. It extends for 676 km in a general direction and averages 50 km in width. The lake covers 32,900 km2, with a shoreline of 1,828 km, a depth of 570 m. It holds an estimated 18,900 cubic kilometres and this is equivalent to about 16% of all fresh water on Earth. The catchment area of the lake is 231,000 km2, two main rivers flow into the lake, as well as numerous smaller rivers and streams. There is one major outflow, the Lukuga River, which empties into the Congo River drainage, the major river flowing into the lake is the Ruzizi River, formed about 10,000 years ago, which enters the north of the lake from Lake Kivu. The Malagarasi River, which is Tanzanias second largest river, enters the east side of Lake Tanganyika, the Malagarasi is older than Lake Tanganyika and, before the lake was formed, directly drained into the Congo River. Apparently it has rarely in the past had an outflow to the sea and it has been described as practically endorheic for this reason. The lakes connection to the sea is dependent on a water level allowing water to overflow out of the lake through the Lukunga into the Congo. Due to the tropical location, it has a high rate of evaporation. Thus it depends on a high inflow through the Ruzizi out of Lake Kivu to keep the lake high enough to overflow. Signs of ancient shorelines indicate that at times Tanganyika may have been up to 300 m lower than its present surface level, even its current outlet is intermittent and may not have been operating when first visited by Western explorers in 1858. Lake Tanganyika is an ancient lake and its three basins, which in periods with much lower water levels were separate lakes, are of different ages. The central began to form 9—12 million years ago, the northern 7—8 mya, there are several islands in Lake Tanganyika
2.
Ecuador
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Ecuador also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland. What is now Ecuador was home to a variety of Amerindian groups that were incorporated into the Inca Empire during the 15th century. The territory was colonized by Spain during the 16th century, achieving independence in 1820 as part of Gran Colombia, Spanish is the official language and is spoken by a majority of the population, though 13 Amerindian languages are also recognized, including Quichua and Shuar. The capital city is Quito, while the largest city is Guayaquil, in reflection of the countrys rich cultural heritage, the historical center of Quito was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. Cuenca, the third-largest city, was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999 as an outstanding example of a planned. Ecuador has an economy that is highly dependent on commodities, namely petroleum. The country is classified as a medium-income country, Ecuador is a democratic presidential republic. The new constitution of 2008 is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, Ecuador is also known for its rich ecology, hosting many endemic plants and animals, such as those of the Galápagos Islands. It is one of 17 megadiverse countries in the world, various peoples had settled in the area of the future Ecuador before the arrival of the Incas. They developed different languages while emerging as unique ethnic groups, even though their languages were unrelated, these groups developed similar groups of cultures, each based in different environments. Over time these groups began to interact and intermingle with each other so that groups of families in one area became one community or tribe, with a similar language and culture. Many civilizations arose in Ecuador, such as the Valdivia Culture and Machalilla Culture on the coast, the Quitus, each civilization developed its own distinctive architecture, pottery, and religious interests. Eventually, through wars and marriage alliances of their leaders, a group of nations formed confederations, one region consolidated under a confederation called the Shyris, which exercised organized trading and bartering between the different regions. Its political and military came under the rule of the Duchicela blood-line. The native confederations that gave them the most problems were deported to distant areas of Peru, Bolivia, similarly, a number of loyal Inca subjects from Peru and Bolivia were brought to Ecuador to prevent rebellion. Thus, the region of highland Ecuador became part of the Inca Empire in 1463 sharing the same language, in contrast, when the Incas made incursions into coastal Ecuador and the eastern Amazon jungles of Ecuador, they found both the environment and indigenous people more hostile. Moreover, when the Incas tried to subdue them, these indigenous people withdrew to the interior, as a result, Inca expansion into the Amazon basin and the Pacific coast of Ecuador was hampered. The indigenous people of the Amazon jungle and coastal Ecuador remained relatively autonomous until the Spanish soldiers, the Amazonian people and the Cayapas of Coastal Ecuador were the only groups to resist Inca and Spanish domination, maintaining their language and culture well into the 21st century
3.
Fault (geology)
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In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock, across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movement. Large faults within the Earths crust result from the action of tectonic forces. Energy release associated with movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. A fault plane is the plane that represents the surface of a fault. A fault trace or fault line is the intersection of a plane with the ground surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on maps to represent a fault. Since faults do not usually consist of a single, clean fracture, the two sides of a non-vertical fault are known as the hanging wall and footwall. By definition, the wall occurs above the fault plane. This terminology comes from mining, when working a tabular ore body, because of friction and the rigidity of rocks, they cannot glide or flow past each other easily, and occasionally all movement stops. A fault in ductile rocks can also release instantaneously when the rate is too great. The energy released by instantaneous strain-release causes earthquakes, a common phenomenon along transform boundaries, slip is defined as the relative movement of geological features present on either side of a fault plane, and is a displacement vector. A faults sense of slip is defined as the motion of the rock on each side of the fault with respect to the other side. In practice, it is only possible to find the slip direction of faults. Based on direction of slip, faults can be categorized as, strike-slip. Dip-slip, offset is predominantly vertical and/or perpendicular to the fault trace, oblique-slip, combining significant strike and dip slip. The fault surface is usually vertical and the footwall moves either left or right or laterally with very little vertical motion. Strike-slip faults with left-lateral motion are known as sinistral faults. Those with right-lateral motion are known as dextral faults
4.
Dead Sea
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The Dead Sea, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and Palestine to the west. Its surface and shores are 430.5 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea is 304 m deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34. 2% salinity, it is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean and this salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 50 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide at its widest point and it lies in the Jordan Rift Valley and its main tributary is the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years and it was one of the worlds first health resorts, and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics, the Dead Sea water has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. The Dead Sea is receding at an alarming rate, multiple canals and pipelines were proposed to reduce its recession, which had begun causing many problems. The Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance project, carried out by Jordan, will provide water to neighboring countries, the first phase of the project is scheduled to begin in 2018 and be completed in 2021. In Hebrew, the Dead Sea is Yām ha-Melaḥ, meaning sea of salt, the Bible uses this term alongside two others, the Sea of the Arabah, and the Eastern Sea. The designation Dead Sea never appears in the Bible, in prose sometimes the term Yām ha-Māvet is used, due to the scarcity of aquatic life there. In Arabic the Dead Sea is called al-Bahr al-Mayyit, or less commonly baḥrᵘ lūṭᵃ, another historic name in Arabic was the Sea of Zoʼar, after a nearby town in biblical times. The Greeks called it Lake Asphaltites, the Dead Sea is an endorheic lake located in the Jordan Rift Valley, a geographic feature formed by the Dead Sea Transform. This left lateral-moving transform fault lies along the plate boundary between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. It runs between the East Anatolian Fault zone in Turkey and the end of the Red Sea Rift offshore of the southern tip of Sinai. It is here that the Upper Jordan River/Sea of Galilee/Lower Jordan River water system comes to an end. The Jordan River is the major water source flowing into the Dead Sea, although there are small perennial springs under and around the Dead Sea, forming pools. The Mujib River, biblical Arnon, is one the larger sources of the Dead Sea other than the Jordan. The Wadi Mujib valley,420 m below the sea level in the southern of Jordan valley, is a biosphere reserve, other more substantial sources are Wadi Darajeh /Nahal Dragot, and Nahal Arugot
5.
Landslide
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A landslide, also known as a landslip, is a form of mass wasting that includes a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep failure of slopes, and shallow debris flows. Landslides can occur underwater, called a submarine landslide, coastal, although the action of gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability. Typically, pre-conditional factors build up specific sub-surface conditions that make the prone to failure. Landslides occur when the changes from a stable to an unstable condition. A change in the stability of a slope can be caused by a number of factors, slope material that becomes saturated with water may develop into a debris flow or mud flow. The resulting slurry of rock and mud may pick up trees, houses and cars, debris flow is often mistaken for flash flood, but they are entirely different processes. Muddy-debris flows in alpine areas cause severe damage to structures and infrastructure, muddy-debris flows can start as a result of slope-related factors and shallow landslides can dam stream beds, resulting in temporary water blockage. As the impoundments fail, an effect may be created, with a remarkable growth in the volume of the flowing mass. The solid–liquid mixture can reach densities of up to 2,000 kg/m3, for a small basin in the Italian Alps affected by a debris flow, estimated a peak discharge of 750 m3/s for a section located in the middle stretch of the main channel. At the same section, the maximum foreseeable water discharge, was 19 m3/s. Earthflows are downslope, viscous flows of saturated, fine-grained materials, typically, they can move at speeds from 0.17 to 20 km/h. Though these are a lot like mudflows, overall they are slow moving and are covered with solid material carried along by flow from within. They are different from fluid flows which are more rapid, clay, fine sand and silt, and fine-grained, pyroclastic material are all susceptible to earthflows. The velocity of the earthflow is all dependent on how much content is in the flow itself, if there is more water content in the flow. This thereby creates a bulging lobe which advances with a slow, as these lobes spread out, drainage of the mass increases and the margins dry out, thereby lowering the overall velocity of the flow. This process causes the flow to thicken, the bulbous variety of earthflows are not that spectacular, but they are much more common than their rapid counterparts. They develop a sag at their heads and are derived from the slumping at the source. Earthflows occur much more during periods of precipitation, which saturates the ground
6.
Lake Baikal
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Lake Baikal is a rift lake in Russia, located in southern Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast. Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, with 23,615.39 km3 of fresh water, it contains more water than the North American Great Lakes combined. With a maximum depth of 1,642 m, Baikal is the worlds deepest lake and it is considered among the worlds clearest lakes and is considered the worlds oldest lake — at 25 million years. It is the seventh-largest lake in the world by surface area, like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed as an ancient rift valley, having the typical long crescent shape with a surface area of 31,722 km2. Baikal is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, the lake was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The region to the east of Lake Baikal is referred to as Transbaikalia, Lake Baikal is in a rift valley, created by the Baikal Rift Zone, where the Earths crust is slowly pulling apart. At 636 km long and 79 km wide, Lake Baikal has the largest surface area of any lake in Asia, at 31,722 km2. The bottom of the lake is 1,186.5 m below sea level, but below this lies some 7 km of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8–11 km below the surface, the deepest continental rift on Earth. In geological terms, the rift is young and active—it widens about 2 cm per year, the fault zone is also seismically active, hot springs occur in the area and notable earthquakes happen every few years. The lake is divided into three basins, North, Central, and South, with depths about 900 m,1,600 m, fault-controlled accommodation zones rising to depths about 300 m separate the basins. The North and Central basins are separated by Academician Ridge, while the area around the Selenga Delta, the lake drains into the Angara tributary of the Yenisei. Notable landforms include Cape Ryty on Baikals northwest coast, Baikals age is estimated at 25 million years, making it the most ancient lake in geological history. It is unique among large, high-latitude lakes, as its sediments have not been scoured by overriding continental ice sheets. Russian, U. S. and Japanese cooperative studies of deep-drilling core sediments in the 1990s provide a record of climatic variation over the past 6.7 million years. Longer and deeper sediment cores are expected in the near future, Lake Baikal is the only confined freshwater lake in which direct and indirect evidence of gas hydrates exists. The lake is surrounded by mountains. The Baikal Mountains on the shore and the taiga are technically protected as a national park. It contains 27 islands, the largest, Olkhon, is 72 km long and is the third-largest lake-bound island in the world, the lake is fed by as many as 330 inflowing rivers
7.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
8.
Lake Superior
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Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes of North America. The lake is shared by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north, the US state of Minnesota to the west and it is generally considered the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. It is the worlds third-largest freshwater lake by volume and the largest by volume in North America, the Ojibwe call the lake gichi-gami, meaning be a great sea. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the name as Gitche Gumee in The Song of Hiawatha, as did Gordon Lightfoot in his song, according to other sources the actual Ojibwe name is Ojibwe Gichigami or Anishinaabe Gichigami. The 1878 dictionary by Father Frederic Baraga, the first one written for the Ojibway language, the first French explorers approaching the great inland sea by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron during the 17th century referred to their discovery as le lac supérieur. Properly translated, the expression means Upper Lake, that is, the lake was also called Lac Tracy by 17th century Jesuit missionaries. Lake Superior empties into Lake Huron via the St. Marys River, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world in area, and the third largest in volume, behind Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. Lake Superior has an area of 31,700 square miles. It has a length of 350 statute miles and maximum breadth of 160 statute miles. Its average depth is 80.5 fathoms with a depth of 222.17 fathoms. Lake Superior contains 2,900 cubic miles of water, there is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America to a depth of 30 centimetres. The shoreline of the lake stretches 2,726 miles, while the temperature of the surface of Lake Superior varies seasonally, the temperature below 110 fathoms is an almost constant 39 °F. This variation in temperature makes the lake seasonally stratigraphic, twice per year, however, the water column reaches a uniform temperature of 39 °F from top to bottom, and the lake waters thoroughly mix. This feature makes the lake dimictic, because of its volume, Lake Superior has a retention time of 191 years. Annual storms on Lake Superior regularly feature wave heights of over 20 feet, waves well over 30 feet have been recorded. The lake is fed by over 200 rivers, the largest include the Nipigon River, the St. Louis River, the Pigeon River, the Pic River, the White River, the Michipicoten River, the Bois Brule River and the Kaministiquia River. Lake Superior drains into Lake Huron via the St. Marys River, there are rapids at the rivers upper end where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient. The Soo Locks were built to enable ships to bypass the rapids, the lakes average surface elevation is 600 feet above sea level
9.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
10.
Fresh water
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Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. The term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water although it does include mineral-rich waters such as chalybeate springs, the term sweet water has been used to describe fresh water in contrast to salt water. The term fresh water does not have the meaning as potable water. Much of the fresh water and ground water is unsuitable for drinking without some form of purification because of the presence of chemical or biological contaminants. It may also be in contact with the underlying underground water. The majority of water on Earth is in ice caps. The source of almost all water is precipitation from the atmosphere, in the form of mist, rain. Fresh water falling as mist, rain or snow contains materials dissolved from the atmosphere and material from the sea, in some cases this acid rain results in pollution of lakes and rivers. In coastal areas fresh water may contain significant concentrations of salts derived from the sea if windy conditions have lifted drops of seawater into the rain-bearing clouds. This can give rise to elevated concentrations of sodium, chloride, magnesium, significant quantities of iron may be transported in this way including the well-documented transfer of iron-rich rainfall falling in Brazil derived from sand-storms in the Sahara in north Africa. Water is an issue for the survival of all living organisms. Some can use water but many organisms including the great majority of higher plants. Out of all the water on Earth, saline water in oceans, seas and saline groundwater make up about 97% of it. Freshwater lakes contain about 87% of this surface water, including 29% in the African Great Lakes, 20% in Lake Baikal in Russia, 21% in the North American Great Lakes. Swamps have most of the balance only a small amount in rivers. In areas with no water on the ground surface, fresh water derived from precipitation may, because of its lower density. Most of the fresh water is frozen in ice sheets. Many areas suffer from lack of distribution of water, such as deserts
