2,436 articles
Devils Hole
Devils Hole: water-filled geothermal cave in southern Nevada, disjunct unit of Death Valley National Park; sole home of the endangered Devils Hole pupfish, a 92°F pool with a 215-square-foot shelf and a half-million-year calcite climate record.
Discovery Bay
Discovery Bay, also called Chile Bay, is a bay on northeast Greenwich Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, site of Chile's Arturo Prat base (1947), Ecuador's Pedro Vicente Maldonado station, and the protected benthic habitat ASPA 144.
Disko Bay
Disko Bay (Qeqertarsuup Tunua) is a bay in West Greenland at 69°N, 53°W, fed by icebergs from Jakobshavn glacier, with seasonal sea ice from January to June, rich Palaeo-Eskimo archaeology, and Danish colonial towns founded 1734–1773.
Ditch mouth
Ditch mouth: the downstream end of a drainage ditch where it discharges into a river, lake, or other receiving water; also called the outlet. Prone to erosion and sediment deposition, stabilized with grassed chutes, rock chutes, or engineered sedimentation basins.
Divide
Divide (drainage divide, water parting): elevated boundary separating drainage basins, from minor ridges to continental divides like the Rockies' Great Divide; divides migrate at 0.001–10 mm/yr and can shift with erosion, uplift, or pumping.
Dixon Entrance
Dixon Entrance, also called the A-B Line strait, is the sea passage between southeast Alaska and Haida Gwaii, named for Captain George Dixon in 1788, site of the unresolved Canada-US maritime boundary dispute over the 1903 A-B Line.
Dja
Dja (Ngoko River), Central African river rising near Abong-Mbang, Cameroon, joining the Sangha; nearly encircles the Dja Faunal Reserve, a 5,260 km2 UNESCO World Heritage Site established in 1950.
Dmitry Laptev Strait
Dmitry Laptev Strait (пролив Дмитрия Лаптева), shallow Arctic strait connecting the Laptev and East Siberian Seas between Oyogos Yar and Bol'shoy Lyakhovsky Island; minimum depth 8 m, summer floating ice, named for explorer Dmitry Laptev.
Dnieper (Дніпро)
Dnieper (Дніпро, Dnipro), third-largest river in Europe after the Volga and Danube, rises in Russia's Valdai Hills and flows 2,285 km through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea; dammed into six Soviet reservoirs, its Kakhovka dam was destroyed in 2023.
Dniester
Dniester (Дністер), Tyras of antiquity, a 1,362 km river rising in the Ukrainian Carpathians, flowing through Moldova to the Black Sea; Moldova's main drinking-water source, dammed by the Dniester HPP, governed by the 2012 Dniester Treaty.
Dniester - Lower Danube
Dniester - Lower Danube is a freshwater ecoregion (FEOW 418) in southeastern Europe, covering the basins of the Dniester and Danube rivers, which both drain into the Black Sea.
Doce
Doce (Rio Doce), 853-km river in Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, Brazil, flowing to the Atlantic at Regência; site of the 2015 Fundão dam collapse and the 2024 R$ 170 billion reparation agreement.
Dogger Bank
Dogger Bank: large shallow sandbank in the southern North Sea, largest in UK waters, SAC of 12,331 km², glacial moraine origin, also a major offshore wind farm site.
Don (landform)
Don (landform): name of several rivers, chiefly the 1,870 km Russian Don flowing to the Sea of Azov, plus the Yorkshire, Toronto, Queensland, and Victorian Don rivers.
Don (protected area)
Don is a freshwater ecoregion, unit 427 in the Freshwater Ecoregions of the World classification, covering the whole Don River basin and smaller rivers draining into the Sea of Azov.
Don Hoi Lot
Don Hoi Lot (ดอนหอยหลอด) is a Ramsar-listed wetland of sandbars and mudflats at the Mae Klong River mouth in Samut Songkhram Province, Thailand, designated a Wetland of International Importance in 2001.
Donets
Donets (Siverskyi Donets, Seversky Donets): 1,053 km river rising in the Central Russian Upland, largest tributary of the Don, flowing through Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts; main water source of eastern Ukraine and namesake of the Donbas.
Dong dongting hu
Dongdongtinghu (East Dongting Lake), part of Dongting Lake (洞庭湖) in northern Hunan, China, is a Ramsar wetland (Site 551, 1992) with a 1,328 km2 water surface, extreme seasonal water-level swings, and heavy Three Gorges Dam impacts.
Dongting
Dongting Lake (洞庭湖), China's second largest freshwater lake in Hunan, a Yangtze floodplain lake; shrank from ~6000 to ~2000 km2 through siltation and reclamation, key Yangtze flood regulator.
Douro
Douro (Spanish Duero): Iberian river rising in Spain, forming a 112 km border with Portugal, flowing to the Atlantic at Porto. Third-longest Iberian river, largest basin; 710 m3/s mean flow, heavily dammed, Port wine valley.
Drainage basin
A drainage basin, also called a watershed or catchment, is an area of land draining all streams and rainfall to a common outlet, bounded by a drainage divide.
Drainage system (geomorphology)
In geomorphology, a drainage system, also called a drainage pattern, is the network of stream channels and tributaries collecting surface runoff, shaped by slope, bedrock, and fracture pattern.
Drake Passage
Drake Passage is the ~1,000 km open-ocean strait between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands, carrying the Antarctic Circumpolar Current through its three main fronts; opened in stages from ~50 to ~12 Ma, it is notorious for 60-knot winds and 10–12 m waves.
Drömling
Drömling, a fen lowland and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (2023) between Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, Germany; drained since 1770 into the 'Land of a Thousand Ditches' with 2,200 km of watercourses across about 452 square kilometers.
Drosera anglica
Drosera anglica (English sundew, mikinalo) is a circumboreal carnivorous sundew, an allopolyploid hybrid of D. rotundifolia and D. linearis with 2n = 40, native also to Kauaʻi's montane wetlands.
Drosera capensis
Drosera capensis, the Cape sundew, is a perennial carnivorous plant native to South Africa's Cape Provinces. It traps insects with sticky mucilage tentacles, curls its leaf into an outer stomach, digests prey with enzymes, and self-pollinates readily.
Drosera rotundifolia
Drosera rotundifolia, the round-leaved or common sundew, is a carnivorous Droseraceae perennial of Northern Hemisphere bogs, with sticky round flypaper leaves, 2n=20, studied by Darwin, parent of D. anglica.
Dubawnt
Dubawnt: a large lake (about 3,600-3,800 km2) and its 933 km river in Keewatin, Nunavut-Northwest Territories, Canada; the river is the main tributary of the Thelon, first recorded by Samuel Hearne in 1770 and explored by Joseph Tyrrell in 1893.
Duck River (Tennessee)
The Duck River (Tennessee) is a 284-mile river, the longest entirely within Tennessee, flowing from the Highland Rim to the Tennessee River; one of North America's most biodiverse rivers and drinking water source for over 250,000 people.
Duck tour
Duck tour: sightseeing ride on an amphibious vehicle, usually a WWII DUKW "duck," traveling on land and water. Started 1946 in Wisconsin Dells; known for trademark disputes and fatal accidents prompting 2023 US Coast Guard canopy and bilge rules.