Portal:World

The World Portal

The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts.

In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind.

Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.

In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". (Full article...)

Selected articles -

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The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is an internationally agreed upon system of identifying bank accounts across national borders to facilitate the communication and processing of cross border transactions with a reduced risk of transcription errors. An IBAN uniquely identifies the account of a customer at a financial institution. It was originally adopted by the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS) and since 1997 as the international standard ISO 13616 under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The current version is ISO 13616:2020, which indicates the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) as the formal registrar. Initially developed to facilitate payments within the European Union, it has been implemented by most European countries and numerous countries in other parts of the world, mainly in the Middle East and the Caribbean. By July 2024, 88 countries were using the IBAN numbering system.

The IBAN consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters comprising a country code; two check digits; and a number that includes the domestic bank account number, branch identifier, and potential routing information. The check digits enable a check of the bank account number to confirm its integrity before submitting a transaction. (Full article...)
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Global change in broad sense refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. It is most commonly used to encompass the variety of changes connected to the rapid increase in human activities which started around mid-20th century, i.e., the Great Acceleration. While the concept stems from research on the climate change, it is used to adopt a more holistic view of the observed changes. Global change refers to the changes of the Earth system, treated in its entirety with interacting physicochemical and biological components as well as the impact human societies have on the components and vice versa. Therefore, the changes are studied through means of Earth system science. (Full article...)
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The history of the Internet originated in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)
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The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Protoscience, early sciences, and natural philosophies such as alchemy and astrology that existed during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, declined during the early modern period after the establishment of formal disciplines of science in the Age of Enlightenment.

The earliest roots of scientific thinking and practice can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, wherein formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Latin-speaking Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but continued to thrive in the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. Aided by translations of Greek texts, the Hellenistic worldview was preserved and absorbed into the Arabic-speaking Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived the learning of natural philosophy in the West. Traditions of early science were also developed in ancient India and separately in ancient China, the Chinese model having influenced Vietnam, Korea and Japan before Western exploration. Among the Pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica, the Zapotec civilization established their first known traditions of astronomy and mathematics for producing calendars, followed by other civilizations such as the Maya. (Full article...)
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The Paris Agreement (also called the Paris Accords or Paris Climate Accords) is an international treaty on climate change that was signed in 2016. The treaty covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The Paris Agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France. As of February 2023, 195 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are parties to the agreement. Of the three UNFCCC member states which have not ratified the agreement, the only major emitter is Iran. The United States, the second largest emitter, withdrew from the agreement in 2020, rejoined in 2021, and announced its withdrawal again in 2025.

The Paris Agreement has a long-term temperature goal which is to keep the rise in global surface temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels. The treaty also states that preferably the limit of the increase should only be 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). These limits are defined as averages of the global temperature as measured over many years. (Full article...)
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The biological and geological future of Earth can be extrapolated based on the estimated effects of several long-term influences. These include the chemistry at Earth's surface, the cooling rate of the planet's interior, gravitational interactions with other objects in the Solar System, and a steady increase in the Sun's luminosity. An uncertain factor is the influence of human technology such as climate engineering, which could cause significant changes to the planet. For example, the current Holocene extinction is being caused by technology, and the effects may last for up to five million years. In turn, technology may result in the extinction of humanity, leaving the planet to gradually return to a slower evolutionary pace resulting solely from long-term natural processes.

Over time intervals of hundreds of millions of years, random celestial events pose a global risk to the biosphere, which can result in mass extinctions. These include impacts by comets or asteroids and the possibility of a near-Earth supernova—a massive stellar explosion within a 100-light-year (31-parsec) radius of the Sun. Other large-scale geological events are more predictable. Milankovitch's theory predicts that the planet will continue to undergo glacial periods at least until the Quaternary glaciation comes to an end. These periods are caused by the variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of Earth's orbit. As part of the ongoing supercontinent cycle, plate tectonics will probably create a supercontinent in 250–350 million years. Sometime in the next 1.5–4.5 billion years, Earth's axial tilt may begin to undergo chaotic variations, with changes in the axial tilt of up to 90°. (Full article...)
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World religions is a socially-constructed category used in the study of religion to demarcate religions that are deemed to have been especially large, internationally widespread, or influential in the development of human societies. It typically consists of the "Big Five" religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. These are often juxtaposed against other categories, such as folk religions, Indigenous religions, and new religious movements (NRMs), which are also used by scholars in this field of research.

The "World Religions paradigm" was developed in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, where it was pioneered by phenomenological scholars of religion such as Ninian Smart. It was designed to broaden the study of religion away from its heavy focus on Christianity by taking into account other large religious traditions around the world. The paradigm is often used by lecturers instructing undergraduate students in the study of religion and is also the framework used by school teachers in the United Kingdom and other countries. The paradigm's emphasis on viewing these religious movements as distinct and mutually exclusive entities has also had a wider impact on the categorisation of religion—for instance in censuses—in both Western countries and elsewhere. (Full article...)

General images -

The following are images from various world-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
Image 2Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Image 3A composite image of artificial light emissions at night on a map of Earth (from Earth)
Image 4Pillar erected by Ashoka, a Mauryan Emperor in India
Image 5Artist's conception of Devonian flora (from History of Earth)
Image 6Earth's western hemisphere showing topography relative to Earth's center instead of to mean sea level, as in common topographic maps (from Earth)
Image 7Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru
Image 8Notre-Dame de Paris, France
Image 9Earth's land use for human agriculture in 2019 (from Earth)
Image 10Moai, Easter Island (from Human history)
Image 11Earth's night-side upper atmosphere appearing from the bottom as bands of afterglow illuminating the troposphere in orange with silhouettes of clouds, and the stratosphere in white and blue. Next the mesosphere (pink area) extends to the orange and faintly green line of the lowest airglow, at about one hundred kilometers at the edge of space and the lower edge of the thermosphere (invisible). Continuing with green and red bands of aurorae stretching over several hundred kilometers. (from Earth)
Image 12Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci epitomizes the advances in art and science seen during the Renaissance. (from History of Earth)
Image 13The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate. (from History of Earth)
Image 14A composite image of Earth, with its different types of surface discernible: Earth's surface dominating Ocean (blue), Africa with lush (green) to dry (brown) land and Earth's polar ice in the form of Antarctic sea ice (grey) covering the Antarctic or Southern Ocean and the Antarctic ice sheet (white) covering Antarctica. (from Earth)
Image 15Earth and the Moon as seen from Mars by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (from Earth)
Image 16Earth's major plates, which are:
(from Earth)
Image 17A schematic view of Earth's magnetosphere with solar wind flowing from left to right (from Earth)
Image 18Empires of the world in 1898
Image 19Earth's history with time-spans of the eons to scale. Ma means "million years ago". (from History of Earth)
Image 20Satellite time lapse imagery of Earth's rotation showing axis tilt (from Earth)
Image 21A 580 million year old fossil of Spriggina floundensi, an animal from the Ediacaran period. Such life forms could have been ancestors to the many new forms that originated in the Cambrian Explosion. (from History of Earth)
Image 22Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.
Image 23Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, about 5–7 billion years in the future (from Earth)
Image 24European migrations by mostly Germanic peoples, 2nd–6th centuries (from Human history)
Image 25Trilobites first appeared during the Cambrian period and were among the most widespread and diverse groups of Paleozoic organisms. (from History of Earth)
Image 26Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance
Image 27Exaggerated illustration of Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun, marking that the orbital extreme points (apoapsis and periapsis) are not the same as the four seasonal extreme points, the equinox and solstice (from Earth)
Image 28A reconstruction of Pannotia (550 Ma). (from History of Earth)
Image 29Chloroplasts in the cells of a moss (from History of Earth)
Image 30A view of Earth with different layers of its atmosphere visible: the troposphere with its clouds casting shadows, a band of stratospheric blue sky at the horizon, and a line of green airglow of the lower thermosphere around an altitude of 100 km, at the edge of space (from Earth)
Image 31Pale orange dot, an artist's impression of Early Earth, featuring its tinted orange methane-rich early atmosphere (from Earth)
Image 32An artist's impression of the Archean, the eon after Earth's formation, featuring round stromatolites, which are early oxygen-producing forms of life from billions of years ago. After the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth's crust had cooled, its water-rich barren surface is marked by continents and volcanoes, with the Moon still orbiting Earth half as far as it is today, appearing 2.8 times larger and producing strong tides. (from Earth)
Image 33Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China
Image 34Artist's impression of a Hadean landscape with the relatively newly formed Moon still looming closely over Earth and both bodies sustaining strong volcanism. (from History of Earth)
Image 35A view of Earth with its global ocean and cloud cover, which dominate Earth's surface and hydrosphere; at Earth's polar regions, its hydrosphere forms larger areas of ice cover. (from Earth)
Image 36Lithified stromatolites on the shores of Lake Thetis, Western Australia. Archean stromatolites are the first direct fossil traces of life on Earth. (from History of Earth)
Image 37Cross-section through a liposome (from History of Earth)
Image 38Successive dispersals of Homo erectus (yellow), Homo neanderthalensis (ochre) during Out of Africa I and Homo sapiens (red, Out of Africa II), with the numbers of years since they appeared before present. (from Human history)
Image 39Scientific worldview. (from World)
Image 40The first airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.
Image 41Yggdrasil, an attempt to reconstruct the Norse world tree which connects the heavens, the world, and the underworld. (from World)
Image 42Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
Image 43Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia
Image 44Earth's axial tilt causing different angles of seasonal illumination at different orbital positions around the Sun (from Earth)
Image 45A 2012 artistic impression of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk from which Earth and other Solar System bodies were formed (from Earth)
Image 46Artist's impression of the enormous collision that probably formed the Moon (from History of Earth)
Image 47A High Desert storm in the Mojave (from Earth)
Image 48A pillar at Neolithic Göbekli Tepe
Image 49Tracy Caldwell Dyson, a NASA astronaut, observing Earth from the Cupola module at the International Space Station on 11 September 2010 (from Earth)
Image 50An animation of the changing density of productive vegetation on land (low in brown; heavy in dark green) and phytoplankton at the ocean surface (low in purple; high in yellow) (from Earth)
Image 51Cuneiform inscription, eastern Turkey
Image 52Relief of Earth's crust (from Earth)
Image 53Tiktaalik, a fish with limb-like fins and a predecessor of tetrapods. Reconstruction from fossils about 375 million years old. (from History of Earth)
Image 54A banded iron formation from the 3.15 Ga Moodies Group, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Red layers represent the times when oxygen was available; gray layers were formed in anoxic circumstances. (from History of Earth)
Image 5513th-century French historiated initial with the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the knights), and those who worked (the peasantry)
Image 56One of the eleven Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela constructed during the Zagwe dynasty in Ethiopia (from Human history)
Image 57Portrait of Alfraganus in the Compilatio astronomica, 1493. Islamic astronomers began just before the 9th century to collect and translate Indian, Persian and Greek astronomical texts, adding their own astronomy and enabling later, particularly European astronomy to build on. Symbolic for the post-classical period, a period of an increasing trans-regional literary culture, particularly in the sciences, spreading and building on methods of science. (from Human history)
Image 58Maya observatory, Chichen Itza, Mexico
Image 59Graph showing range of estimated partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen through geologic time (from History of Earth)
Image 60Wittenberg, birthplace of Protestantism (from Human history)
Image 61Artist's impression of Earth during the later Archean, the largely cooled planetary crust and water-rich barren surface, marked by volcanoes and continents, features already round microbialites. The Moon, still orbiting Earth much closer than today and still dominating Earth's sky, produced strong tides. (from History of Earth)
Image 62The pale orange dot, an artist's impression of the early Earth which might have appeared orange through its hazy methane rich prebiotic second atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere at this stage was somewhat comparable to today's atmosphere of Titan. (from History of Earth)
Image 63A map of heat flow from Earth's interior to the surface of Earth's crust, mostly along the oceanic ridges (from Earth)
Image 64Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack, a result of globalizing maritime trade
Image 65Carving of Persian and Median soldiers, Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 5th century BCE
Image 66A reconstruction of human history based on fossil data. (from History of Earth)
Image 67Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates throughout most of the Mesozoic (from History of Earth)
Image 68Artist's rendition of an oxinated fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. (from History of Earth)
Image 69Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE
Image 70An artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk (from History of Earth)
Image 71Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India
Image 72COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 (from Human history)
Image 73Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India
Image 74A computer-generated image mapping the prevalence of artificial satellites and space debris around Earth in geosynchronous and low Earth orbit (from Earth)
Image 75Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 1945
Image 76Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)
Image 77Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century
Image 78Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed from about 300 to 180 Ma. The outlines of the modern continents and other landmasses are indicated on this map. (from History of Earth)
Image 79Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth, when it was much hotter and inhospitable to all forms of life. (from History of Earth)
Image 80An artist's impression of ice age Earth at glacial maximum. (from History of Earth)
Image 81James Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.
Image 82Benin Bronze head from Nigeria
Image 83Geologic map of North America, color-coded by age. From most recent to oldest, age is indicated by yellow, green, blue, and red. The reds and pinks indicate rock from the Archean.
Image 84Battle during the 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan
Image 85Image of the physical world, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (from World)
Image 86Change in average surface air temperature and drivers for that change. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. (from Earth)
Image 87Umayyad Mosque in Damascus (from Human history)

Megacities of the world -

Skyline from Itaim Bibi, highlighting Parque do Povo, Marginal Pinheiros, Jockey Club and Pico do Jaraguá (background).

São Paulo (/ˌsaʊ ˈpaʊloʊ/; Portuguese: [sɐ̃w ˈpawlu] ^ⓘ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the capital city of the state of São Paulo, as well as the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, and both the Western and Southern Hemispheres. Listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as an alpha global city, it exerts substantial international influence in commerce, finance, arts, and entertainment. It is the largest urban area by population outside Asia and the most populous Portuguese-speaking city in the world. The city's name honors Paul the Apostle and people from the city are known as paulistanos. The city's Latin motto is Non ducor, duco, which translates as "I am not led, I lead".

Founded in 1554 by Jesuit priests, the city was the center of the bandeirantes settlers during Colonial Brazil, but it became a relevant economic force only during the Brazilian coffee cycle in the mid-19th century and later consolidated its role as the main national economic hub with industrialization in Brazil in the 20th century, which made the city a cosmopolitan melting pot, home to the largest Arab, Italian, and Japanese diasporas in the world, with ethnic neighborhoods like Bixiga, Bom Retiro, and Liberdade, and people from more than 200 other countries. The city's metropolitan area, Greater São Paulo, is home to more than 20 million inhabitants and ranks as the most populous in Brazil and one of the most populous in the world. The process of conurbation between the metropolitan areas around Greater São Paulo also created the São Paulo Macrometropolis, the first megalopolis in the Southern Hemisphere, with more than 30 million inhabitants. (Full article...)

List of megacities
Bangalore Bangkok Beijing Bogotá Buenos Aires Cairo Chengdu Chennai Chongqing Delhi Dhaka Guangzhou Hangzhou Ho Chi Minh City Hyderabad Istanbul Jakarta Karachi Keihanshin Kinshasa Kolkata Lagos Lahore Lima London Los Angeles Manila Mexico City Moscow Mumbai Nagoya New York City Paris Rhine-Ruhr Rio de Janeiro Seoul Shanghai Shenzhen Tehran Tianjin Tokyo Xiamen

Did you know -

... that the New York State Pavilion, one of the most popular attractions at the 1964 World's Fair, later stored hazardous waste?
... that HMS Martin was part of the Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy in the First World War, but after the war was sold to be broken up?
... that Heba Saadia, the first Palestinian referee at a World Cup, only took up the profession when she noticed there were no women among a group of referees she saw training?
... that Ertuğrul Gazi, a Turkish floating storage and regasification unit for liquefied natural gas, has a daily capacity of 28 million cubic metres (990 million cu ft), among the world's largest?
... that Jerzy Broszkiewicz, a louse-feeder during World War II, later became a writer of youth literature and drama?
... that technical geography, which includes the application of computer cartography and remote sensing, has origins in Greco-Roman and medieval Islamic cartography?
... that due to his Hungarian background, composer Henri Berény was banned from living and working in Paris during World War I and his home was seized by the French government?
... that New Zealand mayor Georgina Beyer was the world's first openly transgender mayor?

Countries of the world -

Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.

The territory of what is now Azerbaijan was ruled first by Caucasian Albania and later by various Persian empires. Until the 19th century, it remained part of Qajar Iran, but the Russo-Persian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 forced the Qajar Empire to cede its Caucasian territories to the Russian Empire; the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 defined the border between Russia and Iran. The region north of the Aras was part of Iran until it was conquered by Russia in the 19th century, where it was administered as part of the Caucasus Viceroyalty. (Full article...)

List of countries

Wonders of the World -

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, also known as the Seven Wonders of the World or simply the Seven Wonders, is a list of seven notable structures present during classical antiquity, first established in the 1572 publication Octo Mundi Miracula using a combination of historical sources.

The seven traditional wonders are the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Using modern-day countries, two of the wonders were located in Greece, two in Turkey, two in Egypt, and one in Iraq. Of the seven wonders, only the Pyramid of Giza, which is also by far the oldest of the wonders, remains standing, while the others have been destroyed over the centuries. There is scholarly debate over the exact nature of the Hanging Gardens, and there is doubt as to whether they existed at all. (Full article...)

List of articles
Wonders of the World New7Wonders of the World Seven Wonders of Canada Seven Wonders of Colombia Seven Wonders of Poland Seven Wonders of Portugal Seven Wonders of Romania Seven Wonders of Russia Seven Wonders of Ukraine Seven Wonders of Wales Seven Wonders of the Industrial World Seven Wonders of Portuguese Origin in the World 12 Treasures of Spain Eighth Wonder of the World

Related portals

Protected areas of the world -

Image 1
Protected areas of Eswatini include any geographical area protected for a specific use inside the landlocked country of Eswatini, in southern Africa.

Within Eswatini there is a mix of national, private and community-owned protected areas. They include national parks, nature reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and game reserves. (Full article...)
Image 2

The following is a list of protected areas of Burkina Faso. (Full article...)
Image 3
The Protected areas of New South Wales include both terrestrial and marine protected areas. As of June 2020 there are 225 national parks in New South Wales. A number established since the late 1970s followed campaigns by local residents and environmentalists.

Based on the Collaborative Australian Protected Area Database (CAPAD) 2020 data there are 2136 separate terrestrial protected areas with a total land area of 7,696,641 hectares (19,018,810 acres) (9.61% of the state's area). CAPAD data also shows 18 marine protected areas with a total area of 348,849 hectares (862,020 acres), covering 39.63% of NSW waters. (Full article...)
Image 4

The protected areas of the Northern Territory consists of protected areas managed by the governments of the Northern Territory and Australia and private organisations with a reported total area of 335,527 square kilometres (129,548 sq mi) being 24.8% of the total area of the Northern Territory of Australia. (Full article...)
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The South Caucasian nation of Georgia is home to several protected areas, which receive protection because of their environmental, cultural or similar value. The oldest of these – now known as the Lagodekhi Protected Areas – dates back to 1912, when Georgia was part of the Russian Empire.

The total area of Georgia's protected terrestrial territories is 6,501 km² (2,510 sq mi), which amounts to approximately 9.29% of the country's territory. In addition 153 km² (59 sq mi) of marine area protected, or 0.67% of the country's territorial waters. There are a total of 89 protected areas, including 14 Strict Nature Reserves, 12 National Parks, 20 Managed Nature Reserves, 40 Natural Monuments, 2 Ramsar sites and 1 Protected Landscape. Strict nature reserves comprise 140,672 ha, while national parks cover 276,724 ha. The total number of visitors to Georgia's protected areas was just under 1.2 million in 2019. (Full article...)
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Canada's National Parks and National Reserves by provinces and territories

This is a list of protected areas of Newfoundland and Labrador. (Full article...)
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Protected areas of Slovakia are areas that need protection because of their environmental, historical or cultural value to the nation. Protected areas in Slovakia are managed by institutions and organizations governed by the Ministry of the Environment.

Types of protected areas:
- National Park (Slovak: Národný park; abbr. NP)
- Protected Landscape Area (Chránená krajinná oblasť; ChKO)
- National Nature Reserve (Národná prírodná rezervácia; NPR)
- Nature Reserve (Prírodná rezervácia; PR)
- National Nature Monument (Národná prírodná pamiatka; NPP)
- Nature Monument (Prírodná pamiatka; PP)
- Protected Site (Chránený areál; ChA)
- Protected Landscape Element (Chránený krajinný prvok; ChKP)
- Protected Bird Area* (Chránené vtáčie územie; ChVÚ) *Technically Special Protection Area (SPA) under the EU Bird's Directive
- Protected Tree (Chránený strom; ChS)
(Full article...)
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The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation. As of 2022, the 42,826 protected areas covered 1,235,486 km² (477,024 sq mi), or 13 percent of the land area of the United States. This is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world. The U.S. also had a total of 871 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,240,000 sq mi (3,200,000 km²), or 26 percent of the total marine area of the United States. (Full article...)
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This is a list of protected areas of Nova Scotia. (Full article...)
Image 10
As of present, there are around 400 protected areas in Pakistan that are recognized by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The total protected land area represents 13% of Pakistan's landmass as of 2020, The Government of Pakistan plans to increase it to at least 15% by 2023. As a signatory of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Pakistan is committed to expanding its protected areas to encompass 17% of its total territory by the year 2030. This ambitious goal aims to ensure the long-term conservation of nature, safeguard vital ecosystem services, and preserve the cultural values associated with these protected areas. (Full article...)
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Despite being a relatively small country, Albania is exceedingly rich in biodiversity. Its ecosystems and habitats support over 5,550 species of vascular and non-vascular plants and more than 15,600 species of coniferous and non-coniferous evergreens, most of which are threatened at global and European levels. The country has made recent efforts to expand its network of protected areas which now include: 11 national parks, 1 marine park, 718 nature monuments, 23 managed nature reserves, 11 protected landscapes, 4 World Heritage Sites, 4 Ramsar sites and other protected areas of various categories, that when combined, account for 21.36% of the territory. Furthermore, a biosphere reserve, 45 important plant areas and 16 important bird areas are found in the country.

Meanwhile, the central government has proclaimed the Coastline and the Tirana Greenbelt as areas of national importance. (Full article...)
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The protected areas of Chile are areas that have natural beauty or significant historical value protected by the government of Chile. These protected areas cover over 140,000 km² (54,054 sq mi), which is 19% of the territory of Chile. The National System of Protected Wild Areas (SNASPE by its Spanish acronym) is regulated by law #18,362 passed in 1984, and administered by the National Forest Corporation (CONAF).

There are three types of territories:
- National Parks
- National Reserves
- Natural Monuments
(Full article...)
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The national parks of Madagascar include all officially recognized protected areas as of 2015. The protected areas network of Madagascar is managed by the Madagascar National Parks Association (PNM-ANGAP). The network includes three types of protected areas: Strict Nature Reserves (IUCN category Ia), National Parks (IUCN category II) and Wildlife Reserves (IUCN category IV). At the 2003 IUCN World Parks Congress in Durban, the Malagasy President, Marc Ravalomanana, announced an initiative to more than triple the area under protection from approximately 17,000 km² (6,600 sq mi) to over 60,000 km² (23,000 sq mi) (from 3% to 10% of Madagascar's area). This "Durban Vision", as it has been dubbed, involved broadening the definition of protected areas in the country and legislation has been passed to allow the creation of four new categories of protected area: Natural Parks (IUCN category II), Natural Monuments (IUCN category III), Protected Landscapes (IUCN category V), and Natural Resource Reserves (IUCN category VI). As well as allowing these new objectives for protected areas management, the new legislation also provided for entities other than PNM-ANGAP to manage protected areas, such as government ministries, community associations, NGOs and other civil society organizations, and the private sector. (Full article...)
Image 14

Protected areas of Russia, (official Russian title: Russian: Особо охраняемые природные территории, literally "Specially Protected Natural Areas"), is governed by the corresponding 1995 law of the Russian Federation. (Full article...)
Image 15

Protected areas in Estonia are national parks, nature reserves and landscape protection areas (nature parks).

Estonia has five national parks, 167 nature reserves and 152 landscape conservation areas. In addition, there are 116 (118) protected areas with an old (Soviet-era) protection regulation and 537 parks. In total, 18.1% of Estonia are protected nature areas, with Lääne County having the highest percentage (32%) and Põlva County the lowest percentage of protected areas, about 9%. (Full article...)

Selected world maps

Image 11516 map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller
Image 2Only a few of the largest large igneous provinces appear (coloured dark purple) on this geological map, which depicts crustal geologic provinces as seen in seismic refraction data
Image 3Time zones of the world
Image 4A plate tectonics map with volcano locations indicated with red circles
Image 5The world map by Gerardus Mercator (1569), the first map in the well-known Mercator projection
Image 6The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps.
Image 7Mollweide projection of the world
Image 8United Nations Human Development Index map by country (2016)
Image 9Index map from the International Map of the World (1:1,000,000 scale)

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[WW1-1] Cancelled due to World War I

[WW2-2] Cancelled due to World War II

[COVID2021-3] Postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic

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