Environmental Studies

The Everglades is a marshy, low-lying subtropical savanna area, c.4,000 sq mi (10,000 sq km), S Fla., extending from Lake Okeechobee S to Florida Bay. Characterized by water, sawgrass, hammocks (islandlike masses of vegetation), palms, pine and mangrove forests, and solidly packed black muck (resulting from millions of years of vegetation decay in near-stagnant water), the Everglades receives an annual average rainfall of more than 60 in. (152 cm), mainly in the summer.

The Galpagos Islands are an archipelago of 19 large, and numerous small, islands situated directly over the equator in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 965 km off the coast of Ecuador, South America.

Chain of coral reefs and islands about 2,000 km/1,250 mi long, in the Coral Sea, off the east coast of Queensland, Australia.