2,436 articles
Peatland restoration
Peatland restoration is the practice of returning drained or degraded peatlands to health, mainly by rewetting them so they again store carbon, support peat-forming vegetation, and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Pechora
Pechora (Печора, Komi Печӧра) is a 1,809 km river in northern European Russia rising in the Northern Urals and flowing into the Barents Sea; it has the highest mean discharge of European Arctic rivers and a 322,000 km² coal, oil, and gas basin.
Pecos (landform)
Pecos River, also called Río Salado or Río Puerco, a major Rio Grande tributary rising in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico and flowing over 900 miles to Amistad Reservoir in Texas, draining about 44,000 square miles and known for high salinity.
Pecos (protected area)
The Pecos freshwater ecoregion is a conservation unit defined by the drainage basin of the Pecos River, extending from New Mexico into western Texas within the Rio Grande system.
Peel-Yalgorup system
Peel-Yalgorup System, Ramsar Site 482, wetland of international importance near Mandurah, Western Australia; 26,530 ha, listed 1990, over 20,000 waterbirds, Lake Clifton thrombolites, Bindjareb Noongar country.
Peipus
Lake Peipus (Peipsi, Chudskoe), a 3,555 km2 shallow transboundary lake on the Estonia-Russia border, fourth or fifth largest in Europe, with three basins, major fisheries, and persistent eutrophication.
Peninsular Malaysian peat swamp forests
Peninsular Malaysian peat swamp forests are waterlogged, peat-forming coastal forests of the Malay Peninsula, part of Southeast Asia's tropical peat swamp ecoregion, now reduced by drainage, fire, and oil palm conversion to fragmented reserves such as North Selangor and Southeast Pahang.
Penner
Penner (Penna, Pennar; Pinākini) is a 597 km river of southern India rising at Nandi Hills, Karnataka, flowing through Andhra Pradesh to the Bay of Bengal; basin 55,213 sq km, rain-shadow, water-scarce, heavily dammed.
Peribonka
Peribonka (Rivière Péribonka) is a 547 km Quebec river, the largest tributary of Lake Saint-Jean, with a 28,200 km² basin, Alcan and Hydro-Québec dams including a 405 MWe plant, and a namesake village tied to Maria Chapdelaine.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάσσης)
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Periplus Maris Erythraei): anonymous Greek merchant's handbook of the mid-1st century CE describing Red Sea, Arabian, and Indian Ocean trade routes, ports, and commodities, preserved in a single Heidelberg manuscript.
Perolniyoc
Perolniyoc is a waterfall in the Socma community of the Ollantaytambo district, Cusco region of Peru, with the Inca-era archaeological site of Raqaypata directly above it.
Persian Gulf (الخليج الفارسي)
The Persian Gulf (الخليج الفارسي), also called Arabian Gulf in some Arab countries, is a shallow sea between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, about 1,000 km long, draining via the Strait of Hormuz and carrying major world oil exports.
Peru Basin
Peru Basin (Peruanisches Becken, Peruvian Basin): abyssal plain in the southeastern Pacific off Peru, 4,000-4,400 m deep, bounded by the Carnegie and Nazca Ridges, rich in manganese nodules and site of the 1989 DISCOL deep-sea mining disturbance experiment.
Peru–Chile Trench
Chile Trench (Peru–Chile Trench): 6,000-km oceanic trench off Chile and Peru where the Nazca Plate subducts beneath South America; Atacama Trench section exceeds 8,000 m depth; source of the 1960 Valdivia M9 earthquake.
Peter the Great Gulf (Залив Петра Великого)
Peter the Great Gulf (Залив Петра Великого), also called Peter the Great Bay, is a large gulf on Russia's southern Primorsky Krai coast in the Sea of Japan, extending 185 km from the Tumen River to Cape Povorotny, containing Vladivostok, freezing December to mid-April, and claimed by Russia as a historical bay.
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic covers oil and gas exploration in Arctic Alaska, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, Greenland, and Norway, marked by large USGS resource estimates, Shell's failed Chukchi wells, shifting U.S. leasing policy, and severe oil-spill response limits.
Philippine Sea
The Philippine Sea is the world's largest marginal sea, about 5 million km², east of the Philippine archipelago in the western Pacific. Its floor is the Philippine Sea Plate, ringed by subduction zones and the source region of many typhoons.
Philippine Trench
Philippine Trench, also once called Emden Trench: a 1,571 km subduction trench east of the Philippines where the Philippine Sea plate descends westward; deeper than 10,000 m and a major tsunamigenic zone.
Phragmites
Phragmites, the common reed genus, includes four clonal wetland grasses; the Eurasian subspecies Phragmites australis australis is a major North American wetland invader, distinguished from native americanus by faster spread, higher biomass, and stronger diversity reduction.
Pico Island (island, Portugal)
Pico Island (Ilha do Pico), second largest of Portugal's nine Azores islands, 447.9 km², holds Mount Pico at 2,351 m, Portugal's highest point, and the UNESCO-listed basalt-walled vineyard landscape inscribed in 2004.
Pielinen
Pielinen, a large unregulated lake in North Karelia, eastern Finland, about 867 km2, draining via the Pielisjoki into Saimaa; mesotrophic, humic, dimictic, frozen November to May, shaped by post-glacial isostatic tilting.
Pihkva
Pihkva, also called Lake Pskov (Russian: Псковское озеро), is the southernmost, shallowest basin of the Lake Peipsi system, a 708 km² lake on the Estonia–Russia border.
Pillars of Hercules
Pillars of Hercules (Ἡράκλειαι Στῆλαι), ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar and its flanking promontories, Calpe (Gibraltar) and Abila; also bronze columns of Melqart at Gades, marking the world's western edge.
Pinega
The Pinega (Пинега) is a 779 km river in Arkhangelsk Oblast, northern Russia, and a right tributary of the Northern Dvina with a 42,600 km² basin.
Ping
Ping River (Mae Ping, แม่น้ำปิง), 740-km Thai river rising in Chiang Mai and joining the Nan at Nakhon Sawan to form the Chao Phraya; 33,898 km² basin, Bhumibol Dam (1964), ~300-year floodplain-stripping cycle.
Pink and White Terraces
Pink and White Terraces (Te Otukapuarangi, Te Tarata): giant silica sinter terraces at Lake Rotomahana, New Zealand, famed as the eighth wonder of the world, destroyed or buried by the 1886 Mount Tarawera eruption; location and survival still disputed.
Pink Lake (Western Australia)
Pink Lake, historically called Lake Spencer, is a large hypersaline terminal lake about 4 km west of Esperance, Western Australia, whose pink color faded after decades of salt harvesting.
Piper Alpha
Piper Alpha was an oil and gas production platform in the UK North Sea, destroyed by explosions and fire on 6 July 1988, killing 167 of the 226 men aboard.
Piracy in the Strait of Malacca
Piracy in the Strait of Malacca is armed robbery against ships in the 930 km waterway between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, peaking with 28 attacks in 2003.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia
Piracy off the coast of Somalia, or Somali piracy, is ransom-driven hijacking in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean that emerged after Somalia's 1991 state collapse, peaked in 2011, was suppressed by 2012, and resurged from 2024.