VINSON MASSIF IS THE highest peak (16,077 ft or 4,901 m) on the Antarctica continent. It forms the southern outlier of the Sentinel Range, the northern range of the Ellsworth Mountains.

THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC of Vietnam was formed into a single country in 1976 when the North and South Vietnam states were united after the withdrawal of American military, which had been engaged in an anticommunist war since the early 1960s.

WITH AN AREA of 26,830 square mi (69,490 square km), Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa and, after Lake Superior in North America, the second largest lake in the world.

HUMAN GEOGRAPHERS often distinguish between the natural environment and the built environment. The latter, also known as the cultural landscape, consists of that part of our milieu that has been modified by human action.

BOUNDED BY THE Canadian province of Québec to the north, Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, Vermont covers an area of 9,609 square mi (24,887 square km) and is located in the westernmost portion of the New England region of the United States.

VENEZUELA IS A COUNTRY in northern South America. A former Spanish colony, Venezuela formed part of the country of Gran Colombia after achieving independence in the early 19th century.

THE COMPOSITION OF associations among plant species tends to vary regularly across gradients of altitude, latitude, temperature, soil types, and other variables.

Geographers are concerned with studying elements of the natural and human environments. They want to determine the relationships between these elements and wish to explain their patterns of location.

THE STATE OF VATICAN City is the world’s smallest independent state. This tiny city situated on a hill in Rome, Italy, is the capital of the Roman Catholic Church and holds the residence of the pope.

UPON ACHIEVING independence from France and Great Britain in 1980, the peoples of the islands known as the New Hebrides renamed the island nation Vanuatu—“ forever our land”—in a strident attempt to break with one of the most turbulent colonial histories of the developing world.