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Wasatch Fault
The Wasatch fault zone is Utah's longest and most active normal fault, a 400 km series of segments along the base of the Wasatch Range.
Wasatch Formation
The Wasatch Formation is a widespread unit of Paleocene and Eocene continental sedimentary rocks in the Rocky Mountain region, named by Ferdinand Hayden in 1869 for exposures near Evanston, Wyoming.
Weathering
Weathering, also called mechanical weathering, is the in-place breakdown and chemical alteration of rocks and minerals by water, gases, and organisms, distinguished from erosion by the absence of transport.
Weichselian glaciation
The Weichselian glaciation, known in Poland as the Vistulian or Wisła Glaciation, was the last glacial period of northern Europe, spanning roughly the past 115,000 years, when ice sheets grew over Fennoscandia and the North Sea.
Weipa bauxite mine
The Weipa bauxite mine is a large open-cut bauxite mine on western Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia, operated by Rio Tinto since the early 1960s.
West Angelas mine
West Angelas is an iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, about 110 kilometers west of Newman, operated by the Robe River Joint Venture since 2002.
Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin
The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is a vast wedge of sedimentary rock in western Canada and one of the world's most prolific petroleum basins.
Western Range (iron ore mine)
Western Range is an iron ore mine west of Paraburdoo in Western Australia's Pilbara region, jointly owned by Rio Tinto and China Baowu and officially opened in June 2025.
Whakaari / White Island
Whakaari / White Island, also called White Island, is an active volcano in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, some 48 km offshore; a 2019 eruption killed 22 tourists.
Wheeler Shale
Wheeler Shale, Middle Cambrian shale and limestone unit in the House Range, Millard County, Utah, named by Walcott in 1908; famous for Elrathia kingii trilobites and Burgess Shale-type soft-bodied fossil preservation.
Williston Basin
The Williston Basin is a large, roughly circular sedimentary basin covering about 300,000 square miles of the Dakotas, Montana, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, producing oil since 1951.
Wilson cycle
The Wilson cycle is a geodynamic model in which ocean basins open by rifting and close by subduction until continents collide, proposed by J. Tuzo Wilson in 1966.
Wisconsinan glaciation
The Wisconsinan glaciation was the most recent major glacial stage of the Pleistocene Epoch in North America, named for Wisconsin, whose Laurentide Ice Sheet advance shaped the Midwest and Northeast landscape.
Witherite
Witherite is a rare barium carbonate mineral, BaCO₃, of the aragonite group, historically mined almost exclusively in northern England as the world's principal source of barium carbonate.
Witwatersrand
The Witwatersrand is a gold-bearing ridge and sedimentary basin in Gauteng, South Africa, the world's largest gold province and source of nearly 40 percent of all gold ever mined.
Wolframite
Wolframite is an iron-manganese tungstate mineral, (Fe, Mn)WO₄, occurring as a series between ferberite and hübnerite; it is the primary ore of tungsten, mined commercially alongside scheelite.
Wollastonite
Wollastonite, calcium metasilicate (CaSiO3), is a white calcium silicate mineral with needle-like crystals, named for Sir W.H. Wollaston and used in ceramics, plastics, paint, and metallurgy as an asbestos substitute.
Woodford Shale
The Woodford Shale is an Upper Devonian organic-rich marine shale across Oklahoma and west Texas, serving as both a major petroleum source rock and an unconventional reservoir.
Wurtzite
Wurtzite is a hexagonal zinc sulfide mineral, (Zn,Fe)S, and the high-temperature polymorph of sphalerite. Charles Friedel named it in 1861 for French chemist Charles Adolphe Wurtz.
Xenotime
Xenotime is a rare-earth phosphate mineral, the yttrium orthophosphate end member of the xenotime group, one of the three principal rare-earth ores and an important source of heavy rare earths.
Yanacocha
Yanacocha is a surface gold mine in Cajamarca, northern Peru, the largest in South America. Wholly owned by Newmont, it has produced gold since 1993 from pits high in the Andes.
Yardang
A yardang is a streamlined ridge of soft rock or cohesive sediment carved by wind into a form aligned with the prevailing wind, common in drylands and found on Mars.
Yarrabubba impact structure
The Yarrabubba impact structure is a deeply eroded meteorite impact site in the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia, dated at 2229 ± 5 million years, the oldest precisely dated on Earth.
Yellowstone Caldera
Yellowstone Caldera: the 85 x 45 km volcanic depression formed by the Lava Creek Tuff eruption 640,000 years ago, youngest of three Yellowstone hotspot calderas, powering over 10,000 hydrothermal features and monitored by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Yixian Formation
The Yixian Formation is a Lower Cretaceous rock unit in western Liaoning, northeastern China, whose volcanic lakes preserved the Jehol Biota, including feathered dinosaurs, early birds, and primitive mammals.
Youngest Toba eruption
The Youngest Toba eruption was a VEI 8 supervolcanic eruption of the Toba volcano in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, about 74,000 years ago; its ash covered roughly 40 million km² of Earth's surface.
Yucamane
Yucamane (Yucamani), a 5,495 m Holocene stratovolcano in Tacna Region, southern Peru, southern edifice of the Yucamane-Calientes complex near Candarave; last confirmed eruption about 1320 BCE (VEI 5), ranked among the Central Volcanic Zone's highest-risk volcanoes and monitored at green alert by Peru's IGP.
Yulong copper mine
The Yulong copper mine (玉龙铜矿) is a large porphyry copper mine in Jiangda County, Changdu, Tibet, holding China's largest proven copper reserve at 6.5 million tonnes of copper metal.
Zechstein
The Zechstein is the Upper Permian succession of marine carbonates and evaporites across the Permian basins of northern Europe, deposited roughly 260 to 251 million years ago.
Zero-valent iron
Zero-valent iron (ZVI) is metallic iron used as a strong reducing agent to remediate contaminants in groundwater, soil, and wastewater, most prominently in permeable reactive barriers.