Islands and dry-land coastal features

Barbados

Barbados, easternmost Lesser Antilles island nation, capital Bridgetown, area 431 km2. British colony from 1627, independent 30 November 1966 under Errol Barrow, republic since 2021; tourism-driven economy, CARICOM member since 1973.

Barbuda

Barbuda: flat Caribbean island 25 miles north of Antigua, part of Antigua and Barbuda; 62 square miles, about 1,300 people. Codrington lease 1684–1870, communal land tenure, 2017 Hurricane Irma evacuation, Codrington Lagoon frigatebird sanctuary.

Barentsøya

Barentsøya, an island of the Svalbard archipelago between Spitsbergen and Edgeøya, about 1,288 km², part of Søraust-Svalbard Nature Reserve since 1973, named after Willem Barentsz though he never came near it.

Barlow Island

Barlow Island is a small ice-free island off the north coast of Smith Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, named after the fictitious Cape Barlow charted in 1829.

Barra

Barra (Barraigh) is an inhabited island at the southern end of the Scottish Outer Hebrides, featuring Kisimul Castle and a combined population of 1,300 with Vatersay.

Barrier island

Barrier island: sandy coastal landform parallel to the mainland, separated by bays and lagoons; also called barrier chains like the Outer Banks. Forms by wave and longshore sediment deposition, protects coasts from storm surge, and erodes under sea-level rise and human activity.

Barrier reef

Barrier reef: an offshore coral reef separated from land by a deep lagoon, one of three main reef types with fringing reefs and atolls. Largest example is Australia's Great Barrier Reef; Darwin's 1842 subsidence theory explains its origin.

Base Line Cay

Base Line Cay is a small island (cay) in South Andros District, Bahamas, at 24.06667°N, 77.68333°W, elevation about 4 m, near Kemps Bay and Congo Town; GeoNames ID 3572859, Wikidata Q21713633.

Basilan

Basilan: island province of the Philippines in BARMM, northernmost of the Sulu Archipelago, 31 km from Zamboanga; Yakan homeland, rubber and coffee producer, historically shaped by Fort Isabela II and the Sultanate of Sulu.

Basse-Terre

Basse-Terre, western volcanic half of Guadeloupe (848 km²), Lesser Antilles; home of the 1,467 m Soufrière, highest Lesser Antilles peak, built since ~2.8 Ma by southward-migrating volcanism, with the town of Basse-Terre as Guadeloupe's capital.

Bathurst Island (Northern Territory)

Bathurst Island, one of the two main Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory, Australia, about 50-80 km north of Darwin; area about 1,693 km2, named by Phillip Parker King in 1818, main community Wurrumiyanga (formerly Nguiu), site of the 1911 Gsell Catholic mission.

Beach

A beach is a shoreline accumulation of loose sand or gravel formed by wave action, shaped by longshore drift and storms, providing habitat and storm protection, and maintained against erosion through nourishment.

Beachy Head

Beachy Head is a chalk headland near Eastbourne, East Sussex, with Britain's highest chalk cliffs (up to 156 m), the Belle Tout lighthouse (moved inland in 1999) and the 1902 Beachy Head Lighthouse.

Beak Island

Beak Island: Antarctic island at 63°37′S 57°18′W in Prince Gustav Channel, Trinity Peninsula; a partially submerged inactive volcanic caldera rim of Miocene basalt, named in 1949 with Eagle, Tail and Egg islands; site of a 2024 H5N1 skua die-off.

Bear Island

Bear Island (Bjørnøya) is Norway's isolated southernmost Svalbard island in the Barents Sea: 178 km², a 2002 nature reserve and 2010 Ramsar site, famed for huge guillemot and kittiwake seabird colonies and a year-round weather station.

Bear Peninsula

Bear Peninsula is a predominantly ice-covered promontory on the Walgreen Coast, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, at 74°36′S 110°50′W in the central Amundsen Sea Embayment, 140 km west of Thwaites Glacier; bedrock data show it is actually an island, and Hunt Bluff records its last glaciation.

Beaver Island (Lake Michigan)

Beaver Island is the largest island in Lake Michigan, located 30 miles offshore from Charlevoix, Michigan. It is known for James Jesse Strang's mid-19th-century Mormon kingdom.

Beethoven Peninsula

Beethoven Peninsula is the ice-covered south-west part of Alexander Island, Antarctica, also called Peninsula Carvajal by Chile; a ~10,000 km2 plateau with Quaternary volcanic outcrops named after Beethoven.

Belcher Islands

Belcher Islands (ᓴᓪᓚᔪᒐᐃᑦ): about 1,500 islands in southeastern Hudson Bay, Nunavut, Canada, with only Sanikiluaq as settlement; folded Paleoproterozoic Belcher Group rocks, stromatolites, oldest known cyanobacteria, and the Qikiqtait MPA.

Bely Island

Bely Island (Ostrov Belyy), uninhabited Arctic island in the Kara Sea, Yamalo-Nenets Okrug, Russia, north of Yamal across the Malygin Strait; about 1,797 km², flat permafrost tundra with the M.V. Popov station since 1933 and rapid coastal erosion.

Beneden Head

Beneden Head, also Cap Van Beneden or Cabo Van Beneden, is a headland at the northeast entrance of Andvord Bay, Danco Coast, Antarctic Peninsula; charted 1898 by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition and renamed Beneden Head in 1955.

Bering Island

Bering Island (остров Беринга), largest of Russia's Commander Islands in the Bering Sea 175 km east of Kamchatka; named for Vitus Bering, who was shipwrecked and died there in 1741; village Nikolskoye.

Berkner Island

Berkner Island (Berkner Ice Rise, formerly Hubley Island) is the largest Antarctic island, an uninhabited ice rise about 320 km long between the Ronne and Filchner Ice Shelves, rising to 975 m with two domes, and the site of a 948 m deep ice core spanning over 150,000 years.

Biak

Biak: main island of the Schouten Islands off northern Indonesian Papua, seat of Biak Numfor Regency. Known for Inumaki Cave Pleistocene archaeology, the 1944 Allied landing, the 1996 Mw 8.2 tsunami, and fisheries and festival tourism.

Big Diomede Island (остров Ратманова)

Big Diomede Island, or Ratmanov Island, is a Russian island in the Bering Strait, 3.8 km from the American Little Diomede and a day ahead of it.

Big Island

Big Island, or Qikiqtarjuaq (ᕿᑭᖅᑕᕐᔪᐊᖅ), is the Inuktitut name meaning "big island": the Nunavut hamlet on Broughton Island renamed in 1998, and a separate uninhabited Hudson Strait island formerly called Big Island.

Bijagós Islands

Bijagós Islands: 88-island deltaic archipelago about 48 km off Guinea-Bissau; UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (1996), Ramsar site (2014), and World Heritage Site (2025); home of the matrilineal, animist Bijagó people, green sea turtles, saltwater hippos, and hundreds of thousands of migratory shorebirds.