Landforms and terrestrial features

Outback

The Outback, also known as inland Australia, is the vast, sparsely settled interior of Australia, covering roughly 81% of the continent with deserts, shrublands, and tropical savannas.

The Outer Banks (OBX) are North Carolina's chain of barrier islands from the Virginia border to Cape Lookout, site of the Roanoke Lost Colony and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, defined by migrating sand, erosion, N.C. 12, and a $2.1 billion tourism economy.

Outer Hebrides

Outer Hebrides (Na h-Eileanan Siar), Scottish island chain of over 100 islands off northwest Scotland; population 26,020, 333,500 visitors in 2024, highest UK fuel poverty, strong wind energy resources.

Outlook Peak

Outlook Peak, Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, Canada; official Canadian name since 1966. Listed at 2,210 m as the island's highest point, though 2006 GPS readings gave 1,963 to 2,012 m; White Crown Mountain was once considered higher.

Oville Formation

Oville Formation, Cambrian shale-sandstone unit in the Cantabrian Zone, northern Spain, defined by Comte; Middle Cambrian (Acadian) base with trilobites and IMC1-IMC6 acritarch zones, overlain by the Ordovician Barrios Formation.

Owen Fracture Zone

Owen Fracture Zone (OFZ), 800-km dextral strike-slip fault in the NW Indian Ocean forming the Arabia-India plate boundary between the Makran subduction zone and the Aden-Owen-Carlsberg triple junction; slip 3 ± 1 mm/yr, active trace 3-6 Ma old.

Owen Stanley Range

Owen Stanley Range, mountain chain in southeastern Papua New Guinea, about 480 km long, highest peak Mount Victoria (about 4,073 m). Crossed by the 96 km Kokoda Track, site of the 1942 Kokoda campaign, and a biodiversity hotspot with over 4,000 plant species.

Ozark Highlands

Ozark Highlands, a level-3 EPA ecoregion of the Ozark Plateau spanning southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, northeast Oklahoma, and southeast Kansas; karst limestone plateau with spring-fed, clear, high-gradient streams, high fish endemism, and oak-hickory-pine woodland.

Ozarks

The Ozarks, also called the Ozark Plateaus or Ozark Highlands, are a dissected forested highland region of the central United States, covering southern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas.

P. 5841

P. 5841 is an unnamed 5,841 m ultra-prominent peak in China, on the Salween–Yu Qu divide in northwest Yunnan and southeast Tibet, with no logged ascents.

Pacific Coast Ranges

The Pacific Coast Ranges, also called the Coast Ranges, are a system of mountain ranges along the Pacific coast of North America, from Alaska into Mexico.

Paektu Mountain (백두산)

Paektu Mountain (백두산), also Changbaishan or Tianchi, is a 2,750 m active stratovolcano on the North Korea–China border with the caldera Lake Chon, site of the huge 946 CE Millennium Eruption, volcanic unrest in 2002–2006, and UNESCO biosphere reserve and geopark designations.

Painted Desert (Arizona)

Painted Desert (Arizona): colorful badlands of the Late Triassic Chinle Formation in northern Arizona, named El Desierto Pintado by Spanish explorers, extending from the Grand Canyon to Petrified Forest National Park.

Painten Formation

Painten Formation: Upper Jurassic (upper Kimmeridgian to lower Tithonian, about 151–152.4 Ma) Plattenkalk limestone formation in Bavaria, Germany, part of the Solnhofen Archipelago, with Kieselplattenkalk, the Öchselberg Member, and exceptionally preserved marine fossils.

Pakaraima Mountains

Pakaraima Mountains: tepui chain in Guyana, Venezuela, and Brazil on the Guiana Shield, main outcrop of the Paleoproterozoic Roraima Supergroup (73,000 km²), including Mount Roraima (2,810 m).

Pakhnes

Pakhnes (Πάχνες, also Pachnes/Pahnes) is the 2,453 m highest peak of Crete's Lefka Ori (White Mountains) and the island's second highest point, 3 m below Psiloritis, reached by a rough 4x4 road from Anopoli plus a 1.5-2 hour walk.

Palatinate (region)

Palatinate (Pfalz, Palz): historical region of southwestern Germany, once the Electoral Palatinate (Kurpfalz) ruled by the count palatine of the Rhine from Heidelberg, now Germany's second-largest wine-growing region in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Palawan Island

Palawan Island, the long main island of Palawan province, the westernmost Philippines province; a continental fragment of the Asian mainland, UNESCO biosphere reserve (1990), biodiversity hotspot with 1,768 provincial islands, two World Heritage Sites, and a 2025 50-year mining moratorium.

Palm Islands (جزر النخيل)

Palm Islands (جزر النخيل): Nakheel's artificial palm-shaped islands off Dubai, comprising Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali, and Palm Deira, built by dredging Persian Gulf sand, with Palm Jebel Ali relaunched in 2023 after the 2008 crisis.

Palm Jebel Ali

Palm Jebel Ali (نخلة جبل علي) is Nakheel's second palm-shaped artificial island off Dubai's Jebel Ali coast: 13.4 km², 16 fronds, 110 km of new coastline, 2,002 villas, launched 2002, paused 2008, relaunched 2023.

Palm Jumeirah (نخلة جميرا)

Palm Jumeirah (نخلة جميرا), Dubai's palm-shaped artificial island developed by Nakheel from 2001, built from about 100 million m³ of dredged sand with a 2 km trunk, 17 fronds, and an 11 km crescent breakwater; first of the Palm Islands, served by the Middle East's first monorail.

Palmer Archipelago

Palmer Archipelago: island group off the west Antarctic Peninsula, from Tower Island to Anvers Island, named for sealer Nathaniel Palmer (sighted 1820); hosts NSF Palmer Station and Port Lockroy.

Palmer Land

Palmer Land: southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula, south of the Cape Jeremy to Cape Agassiz line, named for sealer Nathaniel B. Palmer; defined by the 1964 US-UK naming agreement, holds most of the peninsula's ice.

Palmyra Atoll

Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited Northern Line Islands atoll halfway between Hawaii and American Samoa, is a U.S. National Wildlife Refuge, Nature Conservancy preserve, and the only incorporated U.S. territory, with over 130 coral species.

Palomo

Palomo, a 4,860-m glaciated stratovolcano in O'Higgins Region, central Chile (GVP 357022), built within double calderas; no known historical eruptions, middle-late Pleistocene age, lahar hazards.

Palos Verdes Peninsula

Palos Verdes Peninsula, a coastal landform in Los Angeles County, California, home to the actively moving Portuguese Bend Landslide, the Palos Verdes Fault, and Olmsted-designed suburban communities and protected nature preserves.

Pamir Mountains

Pamir Mountains, the "Roof of the World" in Central Asia, mainly in Tajikistan, where the Himalaya, Karakoram, Tianshan, Kunlun, and Hindu Kush converge at the Pamir Knot; source of the Amu Darya, home to the Fedchenko Glacier, and site of the collapsing Pamir–Karakoram glacier anomaly.

Pampas

The Pampas are the fertile temperate grasslands of eastern Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, about 50 million hectares, now largely converted to soybean, wheat, maize and cattle production.

Panagia Arkoudiotissa

Panagia Arkoudiotissa (Παναγία Αρκουδιώτισσα), also called Arkoudospilios, is a cave chapel of the Virgin on the Akrotiri peninsula, Chania, Crete, named for a bear-shaped stalagmite, linked to an ancient cult of Artemis, and celebrating the Presentation on 2 February.