414 articles
Betula nigra
Betula nigra, river birch (also red, water, or black birch), a fast-growing deciduous Betulaceae tree of eastern US streambanks and floodplains, with exfoliating bark, spring-fruiting catkins, and bronze birch borer resistance.
Beymelek Lagoon
Beymelek Lagoon (Beymelek Lagünü), a 255 ha brackish coastal lagoon in Demre, Antalya, Turkey, the only natural lagoon on the country's western Mediterranean coast, fed by karst springs, with a state seabass and seabream hatchery and protected wetland status.
Biebrza National Park
Biebrza National Park (Biebrzański Park Narodowy), established 9 September 1993, is Poland's largest national park at 59,223 ha, protecting the Biebrza Marshes peatlands; Ramsar site since 1995, Natura 2000 since 2004.
Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay is a shallow subtropical lagoon along Miami-Dade County, Florida, from Haulover Inlet to Key Largo, home to Biscayne National Park and state aquatic preserves; a $64 billion economic asset facing seagrass loss, nutrient pollution, and Everglades restoration efforts.
Blakeney Point
Blakeney Point is a shingle spit on the North Norfolk coast of England, owned by the National Trust since 1912 and home to England's largest gray seal colony.
Blanket bog
A blanket bog is a rain-fed peatland that blankets the underlying topography across large areas, forming mainly in oceanic climates with over 1,000 mm of annual rainfall.
Blue carbon
Blue carbon is carbon captured and stored by ocean and coastal ecosystems, chiefly salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass meadows, whose anaerobic soils sequester carbon up to ten times faster than tropical forests and support carbon markets.
Blue Lagoon (geothermal spa)
Blue Lagoon (Bláa lónið), geothermal spa on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula formed in 1976 from Svartsengi power plant effluent; silica-rich 37 °C seawater-freshwater mix, company founded 1992, repeatedly disrupted by eruptions since 2023.
Bog
A bog, also called a peat bog, is a peat-forming wetland fed almost entirely by precipitation, producing acidic, nutrient-poor conditions, often carpeted with Sphagnum moss, where deep peat accumulates.
Bog body
Bog body (Moorleiche): a human corpse naturally mummified in acidic, anaerobic peat bogs, preserving skin, hair, and nails while bone dissolves. Famous finds include Tollund Man, Grauballe Man, and Lindow Man, mostly Iron Age deaths.
Bog butter
Bog butter is waxy buried animal fat, mostly ruminant dairy, chemically altered during burial to resemble adipocere, recovered from Irish and Scottish peat bogs from the Early Bronze Age onward.
Bog-wood
Bog-wood, also called bog oak when from oak, is subfossil wood preserved for hundreds or thousands of years in waterlogged peat bogs and river sediments; jet-black bog oak underpins European oak dendrochronologies reaching 8480 BC and supplies archaeological trackway timber.
Bormio
Bormio, an Alpine town in Alta Valtellina, province of Sondrio, Lombardy, Italy, famed for nine thermal springs feeding three spas (Bormio Terme, Bagni Vecchi, Bagni Nuovi), the 2,758 m Stelvio Pass road (1825), Giro d'Italia cycling, and World Cup skiing.
Borneo peat swamp forests
Borneo peat swamp forests, also called Borneo peatlands, are tropical rainforests on waterlogged peat in Borneo's lowlands. Key facts: about 69 Gt regional carbon store, under 1 million ha intact left, orangutan habitat, severe fire, and drainage degradation.
Bottomland hardwood forest
A bottomland hardwood forest is a seasonally flooded deciduous forest on the river floodplains of the southeastern and south-central United States, dominated by gum, oak, and baldcypress.
Bourbonne-les-Bains
Bourbonne-les-Bains is a commune and thermal spa town in the Haute-Marne department of the Grand Est region of northeastern France, built around hot springs exploited since antiquity.
Brackish marsh
Brackish marsh: tidal wetland in estuaries where seawater mixes with freshwater, with water salinity 0.5-35 ppt and soil salinity 0.5-18 ppt, between salt marsh and freshwater tidal marsh in vegetation and position.
British National Vegetation Classification
The British National Vegetation Classification (NVC) is a phytosociological plant community classification for Great Britain, commissioned in 1975 and published 1991–2000 as five volumes of British Plant Communities, with 286 communities from about 35,000 samples.
Browne Falls
Browne Falls is a multi-step cascade in Fiordland, New Zealand, dropping 836 m from Lake Browne into Doubtful Sound; often called the country's tallest waterfall, a claim disputed in favor of the free-falling 580 m Sutherland Falls.
Busanga Swamps
Located in Zambia's northwest near Kafue National Park, Busanga Swamps is a permanent wetland complex in the Lufupa River basin. It is a Ramsar site covering 2,000 km.
Caldas Novas
Caldas Novas is a municipality in southern Goiás, Brazil, sitting over one of the world's largest non-volcanic thermal groundwater systems and drawing hundreds of thousands of tourists.
Calistoga, California
Calistoga is a small city at the northern end of Napa Valley, California, founded by Sam Brannan in 1859 and incorporated in 1886. Known for hot springs, mud baths, the Calistoga AVA wine region, and its hydrogen-battery emergency power system.
Camargue
Camargue: the Rhône River delta in southern France, France's largest wetland (150,000 ha). Flat, mostly below 1 m elevation; rice, salt, bulls, flamingos; Ramsar and biosphere protected, threatened by sea-level rise.
Caryapundy Swamp
Caryapundy Swamp, Ramsar Site no. 2520, is a 70,176-hectare ephemeral wetland in Narriearra Caryapundy Swamp National Park, NSW, Australia, the terminal basin of the endorheic Bulloo River, listed 17 December 2021 for threatened species and waterbird habitat.
Cashel Man
Cashel Man is an Early Bronze Age bog body found in 2011 in Cashel Bog, County Laois, Ireland, dated around 2000 BC, the oldest fleshed bog body known, showing violent death and interpreted as a kingship sacrifice.
Cattle egret
Cattle egret (Western Cattle-Egret, Ardea ibis; formerly Bubulcus ibis): small stocky white heron that forages beside cattle for insects; split from Eastern Cattle-Egret in 2023; spread naturally from Africa to the Americas and beyond.
Cave and Basin National Historic Site
Cave and Basin National Historic Site, Banff National Park, Alberta: hot springs found by CPR workers in 1883, birthplace of Canada's national parks, designated a national historic site in 1981, home of the endangered Banff Springs snail.
Central Syvash
Central Syvash (Центральний Сиваш), Ramsar Site 115 in Ukraine and Crimea, is an 80,000 ha hypersaline lagoon wetland designated in 1976, hosting about 10,000 nesting waterbird pairs and up to 1,000,000 staging birds, with salinity rising sharply after the 2014 canal closure.
Čepkeliai Marsh
Čepkeliai Marsh (Čepkelių raistas) is Lithuania's largest raised bog, 5,858 ha in Varėna district near Belarus, core of the 1975 Čepkeliai State Nature Reserve, a Ramsar, Natura 2000, and wilderness site with relict lakes, dune islands, and rare cranes and black grouse.
Chao Phraya freshwater swamp forests
Chao Phraya freshwater swamp forests: a tropical moist broadleaf ecoregion (WWF ID 224) in central Thailand's Chao Phraya lowlands, about 38,858 km², now almost entirely converted to rice paddies and Bangkok, with relict swamp habitat in Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park.