2,436 articles
Minto
Minto: chiefly Lac Minto (Qasigialik), a large lake in Nord-du-Québec, Canada, named 1898 by Albert Peter Low for the 4th Earl of Minto; source of the Rivière aux Feuilles.
Minto Inlet
Minto Inlet (Kangiryuaqtihuk) is an inlet on western Victoria Island, Northwest Territories, Canada; type locality of the Neoproterozoic Minto Inlet Formation evaporites of the Shaler Supergroup, within the Minto Inlier.
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River drains 41% of the contiguous United States into the Gulf of Mexico. Key facts: 18 million people drink its water, the 1927 flood reshaped U.S. flood control, and its nutrient runoff drives the Gulf dead zone.
Mississippi River Delta
The Mississippi River Delta is the birdfoot delta in coastal Louisiana, also called the MRD, built by Holocene delta-lobe switching. About 5,000 km² of land has been lost since 1932 due to dams, levees, subsidence, and sea-level rise.
Mississippi River System
Mississippi River System: the Mississippi River and tributaries (Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois) draining about 40% of the continental US across 31 states and 2 Canadian provinces; managed for 9-foot navigation, flood control, and nutrient pollution.
Missouri River
The Missouri River, the Mississippi's principal tributary, is regulated by six federal mainstem dams (Fort Peck through Gavins Point) under the Corps' Master Manual for eight authorized purposes, with major sediment, drought, and endangered-species consequences.
Mistassini
Mistassini (Cree "big rock") names Quebec's largest natural freshwater lake and the Cree community of Mistissini on its shore, about 600 km northwest of Quebec City; Cree presence over 5,000 years, fur trade from 1672, James Bay Agreement 1975.
Mitigation banking
Mitigation banking, also called wetland mitigation banking, restores or creates wetlands in advance so credits can be sold to offset permitted impacts under the Clean Water Act.
Mobile Bay
Mobile Bay is a shallow estuary on Alabama's Gulf coast, the sixth largest estuary in the continental United States, with the city of Mobile at its head.
Mobiloil Inlet
Mobiloil Inlet, formerly Mobiloil Bay, is an ice-filled inlet on the east coast of Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula, named by Hubert Wilkins in 1928 after a Vacuum Oil Company lubricant; its head holds the Mercator Ice Piedmont.
Mohns Ridge
Mohns Ridge is an ultraslow-spreading segment of the mid-ocean ridge in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, extending about 550 km from the Jan Mayen Transform Fault to the Knipovich Ridge.
Molloy Deep
Molloy Deep, formally Molloy Hole, is the deepest point of the Arctic Ocean at about 5,550 m, a circular depression in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard, first dived by Victor Vescovo in 2019.
Molopo
Molopo River, ephemeral southern Kalahari river rising near Mafikeng, South Africa; forms Botswana-South Africa border, joins Nossob, blocked by dunes from reaching the Orange River; basin 151,000 km2.
Molucca Sea
Molucca Sea, marginal sea of the western Pacific in eastern Indonesia between Sulawesi and Halmahera; about 200,000 km², maximum depth 4,810 m; site of an active arc-arc collision with double-verging subduction of the Molucca Sea Plate and frequent earthquakes.
Mondorf les bains
Mondorf-les-Bains (Munnerëf) is a Luxembourg spa town on the French border. Its thermal spring was found in 1841, the first bath opened 20 June 1847, and it hosts US Mondorf football club and the Stade John Grün.
Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean
The Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean was a paleo-ocean basin between the Siberian Craton and the North China-Amuria block that closed scissor-like from west to east during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic.
Mono Lake
Mono Lake is a saline, alkaline endorheic lake in eastern California's Mono Basin, remnant of Pleistocene Lake Russell; saltier than the ocean (pH 10), with tufa towers, young volcanism, and post-1941 water diversions to Los Angeles.
Monongahela River
Monongahela River: north-flowing river formed at Fairmont, West Virginia by the West Fork and Tygart Valley rivers, flowing 128–130 miles to Pittsburgh to form the Ohio with the Allegheny; 7,340 sq mi basin, nine locks and dams, coal barge route, drinking water for about one million people.
Montara oil spill
Montara oil spill: 2009 Timor Sea well blowout at PTTEP's Montara platform off Western Australia, releasing about 4.7 million liters of crude over 74 days; Australia's largest offshore-platform spill and third largest overall.
Monterey Bay
Monterey Bay is a bay on central California's Pacific coast, protected as the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (designated 1992). Monterey Submarine Canyon, upwelling, and hundreds of shipwrecks distinguish it.
Montmorency Falls
Montmorency Falls (chute Montmorency) is an 83 m waterfall on the Montmorency River into the St. Lawrence, 12 km from Quebec City; Quebec's highest fall, 30 m taller than Niagara, site of the 1759 Battle of Montmorency.
Moore
Lake Moore is a large ephemeral salt lake in the Shire of Yalgoo, Western Australia, dominating the 24,269 km² Ninghan basin; a hyper-saline halite and gypsum flat with a mined gypsum deposit, proposed as a nature reserve in 2023.
Moosehead Lake
Moosehead Lake, Maine's largest lake (74,890 acres, 117 sq mi, 40 miles long, 246 feet deep), lies in the North Woods at the Kennebec River headwater near Greenville, famed for salmon, togue, and brook trout fishing, its 178-year ice-out record, and the steamboat Katahdin.
Moraine Lake
Moraine Lake, a turquoise glacial lake in Banff National Park's Valley of the Ten Peaks, Alberta, named by explorer Walter Wilcox in 1899; closed to personal vehicles since 2023, accessible only by reservation-only Parks Canada shuttle, commercial buses, or bike and foot.
Moray Firth
The Moray Firth is Scotland's largest estuarine embayment (5,230 km²) on the North Sea coast between Duncansby Head and Fraserburgh, home to the North Sea's only resident bottlenose dolphin population, protected by a 2005 Special Area of Conservation.
More
Море, Russian for "sea," is the Russian-language term for salt water smaller than an ocean and generally near a continent, as opposed to the land.
Morecambe Bay
Morecambe Bay is a large, shallow, sandy bay on the north-west coast of England, spanning Cumbria and Lancashire; it is the second-largest embayment in the UK after the Wash.
Morton Strait
Morton Strait, also historically called Straits of Despair or Hell's Gate, is a hazardous NW-SE strait in the South Shetland Islands between Byers Peninsula, Rugged Island, and Snow Island, charted by sealers and approved as a name in 1953.
Moselle
Moselle (Mosel): major Rhine tributary rising at Col de Bussang in the Vosges, flowing 520 km to Koblenz; 28,000 km² basin shared by France, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium; canalized international waterway.
Mozambique Basin
Mozambique Basin: a sedimentary basin under central and southern Mozambique's coastal plain and shelf, formed during Gondwana break-up, holding about 6 Tcf of gas, and the deep oceanic basin of the southwest Indian Ocean west of the Mozambique Ridge.