Landforms and terrestrial features

Barentsjokulen

Barentsjokulen (Barentsjøkulen) is a 571 km² ice cap on Barentsøya, Svalbard, with four tidewater outlet glaciers including Freemanbreen, which surged in 1956; maximum measured ice thickness 270 m.

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.

Barisan Mountains

Barisan Mountains (Pegunungan Bukit Barisan), the volcanic spine of western Sumatra, Indonesia, formed by subduction of the Indian-Australian Plate, cut by the 1,900-km Sumatran Fault, with Mount Kerinci (3,805 m) as Indonesia's highest volcano.

Barkly Tableland

Barkly Tableland: flat grassland plateau of about 100,000 sq km in Australia's Northern Territory extending into Queensland; Mitchell grass plains on cracking clays, endorheic lakes such as Tarrabool, and very large cattle stations.

Barkol Shan

Barkol Shan, also written Balikun Shan or 巴里坤山, is a mountain range at the eastern end of the Tian Shan in Xinjiang, China, rising to about 4,300 m.

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.

Barnes Ice Cap

Barnes Ice Cap, a roughly 5,900 km² bowling-pin-shaped ice cap on central Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, is the last remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, holds Canada's oldest known ice (~20,000 years), and is projected to disappear within 300 years.

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.

Barre des Écrins

Barre des Écrins, 4,102 m, highest peak of the Massif des Écrins and Dauphiné Alps, France; most southerly 4,000 m Alpine peak; first climbed 25 June 1864 by Whymper, Moore, Walker, Croz, and Almer.

Barren Grounds

Barren Grounds (Barrenlands, the Barrens; Dene dechinule, 'land of little sticks'): treeless tundra region of northern Canada west of Hudson Bay, first named by Samuel Hearne in 1770, home of migratory barren-ground caribou herds.

Barrier beach

A barrier beach is a long, narrow ridge of sand or gravel built by wave action between the ocean and a sheltered lagoon, bay, or marsh.

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.

Barstow Formation

Barstow Formation: Miocene fluvial and lacustrine sequence, about 1,000 m thick, in the central Mojave Desert, California; type section in the Mud Hills; its mammal faunas define the Barstovian North American Land Mammal Age.

Barva

Barva (Barba) is a 2,906 m andesitic shield and complex volcano in Costa Rica's Cordillera Central, 23 km north of San José; largest volcano by volume (427 km³) in the Central American Volcanic Front, with no confirmed historical eruptions but Holocene activity to about 1700 CE.

Oct 15, 2026

Basal sliding

Basal sliding is the movement of glacier ice over its bed, controlled by water pressure at the base and one of three processes of glacier motion.

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.

Batagaika crater

Batagaika crater, or Batagay megaslump, in Yakutia, Siberia, is the world's largest retrogressive thaw slump, a thermokarst landform exposing 650,000-year-old permafrost, releasing about a million cubic meters of material yearly, and yielding mammoth and horse fossils.

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.

Batterbee Mountains

The Batterbee Mountains are prominent mountains rising to 2,200 m on the west coast of Palmer Land, Antarctica, overlooking George VI Sound, first sighted by Lincoln Ellsworth in 1935.

Batu Caves

Batu Caves (Gua Batu), a 329 m limestone karst hill 12 km from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, houses Hindu Murugan shrines and hosts the Thaipusam festival, drawing over 2.5 million devotees, with 366 vascular plant species on the hill.

Batura Sar I

Batura Sar I (Batura I, Batura Sar) is a 7,795 m peak in the Batura Muztagh, westernmost Karakoram, Pakistan; 25th-highest on Earth, first climbed in 1976 by Bleicher and Oberhofer. Not the asthma trial, company, or person named Batura.

Bavarian Alps

Bavarian Alps (Bayerische Alpen): the German section of the Northern Limestone Alps in Bavaria, containing the Zugspitze (2,962 m), Germany's highest peak, Tethys-derived limestone and dolomite nappes, and five rapidly shrinking glaciers.

Bayo Gorbea, Cerro

Cerro Bayo Gorbea (volcano 355122) is a 5,413 m complex volcano on the Chile-Argentina border east of Salar de Gorbea, with no known Holocene eruptions, dacitic summit flows, and a 2019 steam observation.

Bayou Corne sinkhole

The Bayou Corne sinkhole, a 2012 collapse near the Napoleonville Salt Dome in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, formed after the Texas Brine Oxy Geismar #3 brine cavern failed, releasing natural gas and oil and prompting evacuations, monitoring, and litigation.