World physical map
This map is based on a traditional physiography that distinguishes three main types of relief:
Other types of terrain shown on the map include the valley, the hill, the fjord, the gorge and, submerged, the shoal, the seamount, the ridge and the ocean trench. Map 2018.
The physical reliefs of the earth include the emerged areas and the underwater areas.
Emerging or aerial landforms include glacial landforms and stricto sensu landforms. In the twentieth century, the ice reached its peak of 15 to 16 million square kilometers, an extent one and a half times that of Europe. 97% of this area is occupied by the two remaining ice sheets, that of Antarctica and that of Greenland. The first is a uniform plateau at 2,800 m altitude sometimes dominated by nunataks, this southern ice sheet being rugged with high mountain ranges. The Greenland ice sheet offers the same type of terrain, with ice reaching an average altitude of 2,135 meters. This global land relief map shows the classic plains/plateaux/mountains triptych, to which can be added the large rifts, ergs and dune fields, traps and active volcanoes, as well as recent or old mountain ranges of of folded structure or not.
The great submarine reliefs are equally varied: the continental shelf (depth of less than 500 m and most often 200 m) occupies 7.6% of the total surface of the oceans; the continental slope, 15.3% of the surface; the ocean basins, consisting of an abyssal plain (4000 to 6000 m deep) and a mid-ocean ridge (2000 to 3000 m) occupy 77% of the total area. Other marked undersea features are on active continental margins: ocean trenches up to 10 000 m deep; island arcs, usually volcanic and seismic, which isolate marginal seas with complex bottoms due to intense tectonics. Some reliefs may emerge from ocean basins, volcanic islands (isolated submarine volcanoes or archipelagoes of aligned islands such as the Marquesas Islands) and submarine volcanic plateaus (Kerguelen plateau, Azores, Iceland). Finally, off the low-slope continental shelves, large submarine deltas (Mississippi, Nile, Niger) are visible, while at the outlet of the submarine canyons, submarine cones (abyssal deltas of the Amazon, Congo).