3,546 articles
Sadoga Shima
Sadoga Shima (佐渡島), Sado Island, Japan's largest remote island in the Sea of Japan off Niigata, 855.34 km²; home of the 2024 UNESCO-listed Sado Island Gold Mines, exile history, and crested ibis reintroduction.
Sahara
Sahara: the world's largest hot desert, 9.4 million km² across North Africa. Also called the largest warm desert; formed in the Pliocene, green during the African Humid Period, now expanding with Sahel greening at its southern edge.
Sahara Desert (ecoregion)
Sahara Desert ecoregion (WWF PA1327): the world's largest hot desert, ~9–10 million km² across North Africa, with ~2,800 plants, 70 mammals, ergs, regs, oases, Green Sahara climate history, dust export, and collapsed megafauna.
Saharan Atlas
Saharan Atlas (Pre-Saharan Atlas): weakly deformed intracontinental range in Algeria, over 700 km SW–NE between the High Atlas and Aurès, with Ksour, Djebel Amour, and Ouled Nail subranges, bounded south by the South Atlas Fault and Saharan Platform.
Sahel Alma (Dubertret collection, MNHN) Formation
Sahel Alma (Sahel Aalma, ساحل علما) is a late Santonian Konservat-Lagerstätte near Beirut, Lebanon, in chalky limestone over 150 m deep, famed for fishes, shrimps, and coleoids including the oldest known octopus; the outcrop is no longer accessible.
Sahuasiray (Nevado Colque Cruz)
Sahuasiray (Saguasiray, locally Colque Cruz), 5,818 m peak of Peru's Cordillera Urubamba near Cusco; first climbed 1963 by Italians (Carlo Pivano died in rockfall), second ascent 2015 via southwest face by Nathan Heald.
Saint Brendan's Island
Saint Brendan's Island, a phantom island of the Atlantic named for the Irish abbot Saint Brendan the Navigator, appeared on maps from the 13th to the 18th century, placed near the Canaries, west of Ireland, and later Newfoundland, inspiring expeditions until 1727.
Saint Croix
Saint Croix, largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands (84 sq mi, 41,004 people in 2020), a former Danish sugar colony bought by the U.S. in 1917 for $25 million, with towns Christiansted and Frederiksted.
Saint Elias Mountains
Saint Elias Mountains: highest coastal mountains on Earth on the Alaska–Yukon–British Columbia border; home of Mount Logan (5,959 m), vast icefields, Yakutat terrane uplift, and rapid glacier change.
Saint Helena
Saint Helena: remote volcanic British Overseas Territory island in the South Atlantic, 1,200 miles from Africa; settled 1659, site of Napoleon's exile and death (1821), over 500 endemic species, airport opened 2017.
Saint Helena Island (South Carolina)
Saint Helena Island is a rural Sea Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, home to the country's largest Gullah community, the Penn Center civil rights landmark, and a cultural protection overlay zoning district.
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha: British Overseas Territory of three South Atlantic islands sharing one Governor since the 2009 Constitution; about 4,000 people, UK-aid dependent, airport opened 2017.
Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands
Saint John (St. John), smallest of the three main U.S. Virgin Islands, about 4,000 residents, no airport, reached by ferry from St. Thomas. Over half the island is Virgin Islands National Park, established 1956 from Laurance Rockefeller's donated land; Danish colony from 1718, sold to the U.S. in 1917.
Saint Kitts
Saint Kitts (St Christopher), volcanic island in the northern Lesser Antilles, larger island of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis; 168 km², Mount Liamuiga 1,156 m, capital Basseterre, first English Caribbean colony (1623).
Saint Lucia Island
Saint Lucia Island: volcanic Lesser Antilles island between Martinique and St Vincent, 616 km2, capital Castries. Known for the Pitons domes, the Qualibou caldera of the Soufriere Volcanic Centre, last eruption 1766, independence 1979.
Saint Martin (island)
Saint Martin (Sint Maarten) is a Caribbean island divided since the 1648 Treaty of Concordia between French Saint-Martin in the north and Dutch Sint Maarten in the south, the smallest inhabited island shared by two states, with a 10 km border settled by a 2023 agreement.
Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Saint Thomas is a 32-square-mile Caribbean island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, capital Charlotte Amalie, bought from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million in gold; mountainous, water-scarce, tourism-driven.
Sainte-Barbe Clays Formation
Sainte-Barbe Clays Formation (SBA), a Barremian-Aptian Wealden-facies clay formation in the Hainaut Group, Mons Basin, Belgium; grey lignitic fossiliferous sinkhole clays at Bernissart that yielded the Iguanodon dinosaurs.
Sairecabur
Sairecabur, also Sairecábur, is a dormant andesitic-dacitic stratovolcano on the Chile-Bolivia border in the Central Volcanic Zone, about 5,971 m high, with a 4.5-km caldera and no confirmed Holocene eruptions.
Sakhalin (Сахалин)
Sakhalin (Сахалин), also Karafuto, is Russia's largest island north of Hokkaido: 948 km long, about 76,400 km², capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, transferred between Russia and Japan in 1875, 1905, and 1945, now the core of Sakhalin Oblast with its oil, gas, and LNG industry.
Sakishima Islands
Sakishima Islands (先島諸島), the Miyako and Yaeyama island groups at the southwestern end of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan; includes Ishigaki, Iriomote, Miyako, and Yonaguni, Japan's closest islands to Taiwan, annexed by the Ryukyu Kingdom in the late 15th-16th century.
Sakurajima (桜島)
Sakurajima (桜島) is an active stratovolcano in Kagoshima Bay, Kyushu, Japan, post-caldera volcano of Aira caldera, 1,117 m, joined to Osumi Peninsula by 1914 Taisho eruption lava, continuously erupting since 1955.
Salina
Salina: a landform term for salt-crusted areas such as salt flats and saline playas, or saline water bodies like salt marshes; also a saltworks. From Latin salinae; related to playas, sabkhas, and saline lakes.
Salina Turda
Salina Turda is a historic salt mine at Turda, Transylvania, Romania, worked from Roman times until 1932 and reopened in 1992 as an underground museum, amusement, and spa complex with Rudolf, Terezia, and Iosif chambers.
Salinas Valley
The Salinas Valley is an 80-mile agricultural valley in Monterey County, California, between the Gabilan and Santa Lucia ranges, drained by the 170-mile Salinas River; a major vegetable-producing region facing seawater intrusion managed under SGMA.
Salisbury Island
Salisbury Island: name of several islands, chiefly an uninhabited 804 km2 arctic island in Hudson Strait, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada, with a walrus colony; also an official island name in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Salmon River Mountains
Salmon River Mountains: unorganized mountain mass in central Idaho, part of the Idaho Batholith; second largest batholith mountain group, ridges 7,000-9,000 ft, drained by the Salmon River and largely within the Frank Church Wilderness.
Salsette Island (साष्टी)
Salsette Island (साष्टी, Shashti, "sixty-six villages") is the large island north of Bombay on which Mumbai and part of Thane district stand; Kanheri's 109 Buddhist caves, Portuguese and Maratha rule, British annexation 1782.
Salt Range
Salt Range: hill system in Punjab, Pakistan, named for Neoproterozoic rock salt of the Salt Range Formation; mines at Khewra, Kalabagh, Warcha; Himalayan frontal thrust over a salt décollement.
Saltoro Kangri
Saltoro Kangri (K10, Peak 36) is a 7,742 m peak in the Saltoro Mountains of the Karakoram near the Siachen Glacier, the world's 31st-highest mountain, first climbed in 1962 by a Japanese-Pakistani expedition.