Categories are built around physical geography rather than region or political boundary.
Terrain Index
Browse the atlas by physical structure and setting.
The Terrain Index is the atlas-wide hub for browsing by landform, water system, biome, and coastal environment. It is designed to stay stable as the archive grows, so readers can move between major physical categories before narrowing into individual records.
Core Terrain Groups
Primary hubs for natural geography
These are the clearest top-level groupings for the current atlas. They are broad enough to remain durable, but specific enough to guide new articles and records into consistent homes.
Mountains, plateaus, volcanoes, and uplands
Use this hub for relief, ridge systems, snowfields, high plateaus, volcanic arcs, and alpine environments.
- Major mountain systems and linked ranges
- Volcanic peaks and caldera landscapes
- High plateaus, escarpments, and upland basins
Drainage basins, freshwater corridors, and inland waters
This group covers river systems, lakes, waterfalls, wetlands, deltas, and basin structure at every scale.
- Headwaters, tributaries, floodplains, and deltas
- Freshwater lakes and inland seas
- Falls, gorges, and connected wetland systems
Deserts, islands, reefs, shorelines, and shelf margins
Coastal and arid geographies belong together here because they often hinge on exposure, water scarcity, and edge conditions.
- Deserts, salt basins, and hyper-arid plateaus
- Reef systems, barrier islands, and coral shelves
- Coastlines, bays, capes, and continental margins
Secondary Hubs
Supporting indexes for broader expansion
These can follow once the core hubs are in place. They help absorb future atlas growth without forcing every subject into only three large buckets.
Forests, grasslands, tundra, and wetlands
A separate biome layer becomes useful once the archive expands beyond landforms into ecological regions and vegetation zones.
Glaciers, icefields, snow basins, and polar surfaces
This hub can collect cold-region entries that otherwise split awkwardly between mountain and water categories.
Standalone island systems and oceanic groupings
If coastal coverage grows, a dedicated island index can separate archipelago browsing from broader shoreline and marine pages.
Editorial Notes
What makes a terrain hub useful
Terrain hubs should be stable, legible, and broad enough to support both flagship articles and compact reference entries.
Prefer durable physical categories
Mountains, rivers, coasts, and deserts outlast temporary editorial themes and give the site a clear long-term spine.
Let records live in more than one path
A place like the Himalayas can belong to mountains, cryosphere, and headwaters without losing its main identity.
Move from hub to subject record cleanly
The terrain page should orient users, then hand them off quickly to the catalog or a deeper article.