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Lut Desert
Dasht-e Lut (دشت لوت), the Lut Desert, is Iran's second-largest desert, a hyper-arid salt desert in the southeast and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2016.
Luzon
Luzon (Luzón) is the largest, most populous Philippine island, about 105,000-110,000 km², holding Metro Manila and eight administrative regions with roughly 57 percent of the national population; crossed by the active Philippine Fault.
Lyddan Island
Lyddan Island (利丹島), an ice-covered Antarctic island about 45 mi long with three trefoil arms, at the SW end of the Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf, separating it from the Brunt Ice Shelf; discovered 1967, named for USGS engineer Robert H. Lyddan.
Lyell Icefield
Lyell Icefield, Canadian Rockies icefield on the Continental Divide straddling Alberta and British Columbia; feeds the Southeast Lyell and Southwest Lyell glaciers; first described 1858 by Hector of the Palliser expedition.
Maasai Steppe
The Maasai Steppe is a ~22,000 km² semi-arid savanna in northern Tanzania around Tarangire National Park and the Simanjiro plains, where Maasai pastoralists, livestock, and declining large-mammal wildlife share village lands and protected areas.
Mac. Robertson Land
Mac. Robertson Land is a sector of East Antarctica at about 70°S, 65°E, discovered and named by Douglas Mawson's 1929-30 BANZARE voyage after patron Macpherson Robertson; it hosts Mawson station, the Prince Charles Mountains, and several Antarctic Specially Protected Areas.
Maca
Maca (Volcán Macá) is a glacier-covered stratovolcano in Aysén, Chile, on the Liquiñe-Ofqui fault zone; last confirmed eruption about 1560 CE, MAC1 tephra eruption ~1,440 cal years BP.
Macaronesia
Macaronesia: biogeographical region of the volcanic NE Atlantic archipelagos Azores, Madeira-Selvagens, Canaries, and Cabo Verde; coined by Philip Barker Webb ca. 1850; ~14,600 km² with ~6,400 endemic terrestrial species.
Machias Seal Island
Machias Seal Island: small disputed island in the Bay of Fundy claimed by both Canada and the United States, with a lighthouse manned since 1832, a 1944 migratory bird sanctuary hosting over 1,000 puffin pairs, and contested gray-zone lobster waters.
Mackenzie King Island
Mackenzie King Island is an uninhabited island in the Queen Elizabeth Islands of the Canadian Arctic, mostly in the Northwest Territories. About 5,048 km², largest of the Prime Minister group, named for Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1950.
Mackenzie Mountains
Mackenzie Mountains, northern Canadian Cordillera range in NWT and Yukon, Canada; known for >10 km of Neoproterozoic strata (Mackenzie Mountains and Windermere supergroups), Rapitan glacial deposits, and Nahanni National Park Reserve.
Mackinac Island
Mackinac Island: car-free Lake Huron island in Michigan, 3.8 square miles, ferry-accessed; site of Fort Mackinac (built 1780, captured 1812) and Mackinac Island State Park, formerly Mackinac National Park (1875).
Macquarie Island
Macquarie Island, subantarctic Australian World Heritage island 1,500 km southeast of Tasmania; unique exposed mantle rocks; invasive rabbits, rats and mice eradicated by 2014; year-round research station.
Madura
Madura (Pulau Madura, Polo Madhurâ), Indonesian island off northeast Java in East Java province, divided into Bangkalan, Sampang, Pamekasan, and Sumenep regencies; infertile limestone terrain, salt, tobacco, and cattle economy, linked to Surabaya by the 5.4 km Suramadu bridge.
Mafadi
Mafadi (also Ntheledi) is a 3,446 m peak on the Drakensberg escarpment border and the highest point in South Africa, lower than Lesotho's Thabana Ntlenyana; its name was borrowed from a Lesotho peak in 1971.
Magdalen Islands
The Magdalen Islands (Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Menagoesenog) are a 190 km² sandbar-linked Quebec archipelago in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 105 km from Prince Edward Island, with about 12,800 inhabitants, Acadian roots, a CTMA ferry lifeline to Souris, and endemic wildlife.
Mageik
Mount Mageik, a 2,165 m glacier-covered andesite-dacite compound stratovolcano in Katmai National Park, Alaska, part of the Katmai volcanic cluster near Novarupta; last confirmed eruption about 500 BCE, with fumarolic summit crater lake and uncertain 20th-century eruption reports.
Maglić
Maglić (Маглић) is a Dinaric Alps mountain on the Bosnia and Herzegovina–Montenegro border; its 2,386 m Bosnian summit is the country's highest point, in Sutjeska National Park near Foča.
Magna Hungaria
Magna Hungaria, Latin for Great Hungary, is the medieval name for a region between the Volga and the Urals where Hungarians still lived in the 13th century.
Mahé, Seychelles
Mahé is the largest island of Seychelles (157.3 km², Morne Seychellois 905 m), home to capital Victoria, most of the population, the international airport, and the site of L'Établissement du Roy, founded 1778.
Mahishasuramardini Cave
The Mahishasuramardini Cave, also called the Mahishasuramardini Mandapa, is a 7th-century Pallava rock-cut cave temple at Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, known for its relief of Durga slaying the buffalo demon Mahishasura.
Maijishan Grottoes
The Maijishan Grottoes (麦积山石窟) are 194 rock-cut Buddhist caves on a hill near Tianshui, Gansu, begun around 400 CE, known as the Oriental Sculpture Museum for their clay statues.
Maipo
Maipo, a 5,323 m Chile-Argentina border stratovolcano southeast of Santiago, partially fills the 450,000-year-old Diamante caldera; last confirmed eruption 1912, no fumaroles, high Argentine volcanic risk rank.
Maja e Jezercës
Maja e Jezercës (Jezerski vrh), 2,694 m, is the highest peak of the Prokletije/Accursed Mountains and the Dinaric Alps, Albania's second highest after Korab, first climbed in 1929.
Majlis al Jinn
Majlis al Jinn, "meeting place of the jinn," is a vast limestone cave chamber on the Selmah Plateau in Oman, among the largest known underground chambers in the world.
Majuli (মাজুলী)
Majuli (মাজুলী), the world's largest inhabited river island in the Brahmaputra, Assam, India; a cultural landscape of Satras formed by a 1750 flood, losing half its area to erosion.
Majuro
Majuro (Mājro) is a coral atoll in the central Pacific Ocean and the location of the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, its most populated atoll.
Makalu (मकालु)
Makalu (मकालु), also called Makalu I in the Mahalangur Himal, is the world's fifth-highest mountain (8,463 or 8,485 m) on the Nepal–Tibet border about 20 km east of Everest, first climbed 15 May 1955 by Terray and Couzy.
Makgadikgadi Pans
Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana's Sua (Sowa) and Ntwetwe salt pans in the Kalahari basin, relicts of paleolake Makgadikgadi; world's largest salt pan complex, flamingo breeding site, zebra migration, UNESCO tentative list.
Makira
Makira (San Cristobal, Hanuato'o) is the easternmost major island of Solomon Islands, main island of Makira-Ulawa Province with capital Kirakira; 3,090 km2, mountainous, biodiverse, with new protected areas and a 2026 WCS ocean-governance MoU.