SAKHALIN IS THE LARGEST island of the Russian Federation, 589 mi (948 km) long and 16 to 105 mi (25 to 170 km) wide, with an area of 24,560 square mi (78,000 square km).
THE COUNTRY OF Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is located in the Windward Islands section of the Antilles chain, between Saint Lucia and Grenada in the Caribbean Sea.
AS FRENCH TERRITORIES (93 square mi or 242 square km) and a curious leftover from the chessboard games of colonial diplomacy of the 18th-century great powers, the tiny islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are the only remaining fragments of the once mighty French North American empire.
SAHEL (OR SAHIL) MEANS “edge or border” in Arabic. The Sahel is a semiarid transitional zone between the southern edge of the Sahara Desert and the humid savannah zone of Africa.
SHROUDED IN MISTS sitting under the hot sun of the equator is a mountain range believed to be the mysterious “Mountains of the Moon” spoken of by the ancient Greeks.
STRETCHING IN A GIGANTIC arc around the Arctic Ocean and North Pole, the Russian Federation spans 11 time zones, nearly half the globe from east to west.
IN TERMS OF LENGTH and volume, the Ruhr River is not one of Germany’s major rivers. But considered as a center of economic activity, the Ruhr is among the most prominent rivers in Europe.
THE RUB’ AL-KHALI (Arabic for “Empty Quarter”) is located in the southern part of the Arabian Desert. The Al-Murrah Bedouin, who roam its southern edges call it the ar-Ramlah, the “sand.”
EARTH HAS TWO primary motions: revolution and rotation. The first refers to the earth’s annual orbit of the sun, which takes a bit more than 365 days per year (hence, a leap year with 366 days every four years in order to “catch up”).
ROMANIA IS AN OVAL-shaped country in southeastern Europe. Situated in the northeastern part of the Balkan Peninsula, it is halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains and also halfway between the North Pole and the equator.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS are a chain of mountain ranges 3,000 mi (4,800 km) long and as wide as 350 mi (563 km) running predominantly north to south in the western part of the North American continent.
RIPARIAN IS DERIVED from the Latin riparius, meaning “of the river bank.” The term was historically used to describe the area of land lying adjacent to a body of water: primarily streams or rivers but also lakes.
THE RIO GRANDE was once known as “Rio del Norte,” and the first to describe it to Europeans was Captain General Juan de Oñate, whose party of exploration first visited the river on April 20, 1598.
The Pacific Ring of Fire is an arc of intense earthquake (seismic) and volcanic activity stretching from New Zealand, along the eastern edge of Asia, north across the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and south along the coast of North and South America.
A RIFT VALLEY IS A trenchlike basin with steep parallel sides. The valley is essentially a down-faulted crustal block (grabben) between two parallel faults. A rift valley is different from an ordinary grabben for its remarkable length and depth.
THE RHÔNE IS THE chief river of southeastern France, draining much of the western Alps and connecting the regions of the interior to the Mediterranean coast.
WITH A TOTAL LENGTH of 820 mi (1,320 km) flowing through Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, the Rhine is the longest river in Germany and probably the most important waterway of western Europe.
THE WORD resource is derived from the Latin resurgere, meaning to “rise again.” Therefore, a resource can be part of a cyclical process that can change and return over time and space.
RELIGION CAN BE DEFINED as a unified set of beliefs, values, and practices of an individual or a group of people that is based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.