2. Europe is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south by the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Caspian Sea; the eastern boundary runs along the Ural Mts.

3. Mediterranean Sea

4. Europe’s rivers Europe is a well-watered continent with many rivers. Most of the continent's drainage finds its way to the Atlantic Ocean via a number of master river systems, whose watersheds interlock in a most complex manner.

6. Rhine River shipping

7. Danube River Danube River

8. Danube River The second longest river in Europe, it is one of the major methods of transportation. It is the only major European river to flow west to east, going through eight countries and three capitals including: Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; and Belgrade, Serbia.

9. Danube River

10. Volga River The Volga River in Western Russia, Europe's longest river, with a length of 3,690 km, provides the core of the largest river system in Europe.

14. European Peninsulas Scandinavian Jutland Balkan Italian Iberian Crimean

15. Scandanavian Peninsula In the 17th Century, the Swedish empire consisted of most of Scandanavia. The Swedish Empire in 1658 (orange) overlaid by present day Sweden (dark orange).

16. Fjord - A long, narrow arm of the sea, usually formed by entrance of the sea into a deep glacial trough.

17. The Balkan Peninsula The Balkans is the historic and geographic name used to describe southeastern Europe.

18. Italian Boot The Italian peninsula or the Apennine peninsula is one of the greatest peninsulas of Europe, spanning 1000 km from the Alps in the north, to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south.

19. Sicily . The Strait of Messina is between the island of Sicily and the Italian peninsula Italy Mediterranean Sea Strait of Messina

20. Mt. Etna on the island of Sicily is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

22. Rome grew along the banks of the Tiber River into a major city under the rule of the Etruscans in the centuries before Christ .

23. Vatican City The Vatican City, officially the State of the Vatican City is a landlocked enclave surrounded by the city of Rome in Italy , and the smallest independent state in the world. Nearly a billion Catholics worldwide mourned the death of Pope John Paul II this month.

24. Sinking Venice Raised walkways have been installed in places where the flooding is worst. These people are queueing to enter the Basilica di San Marco A combination of man’s activities and natural changes threaten the very existence of this historical Italian city.

25. Venice flooding High water regularly floods St. Mark's Square and other parts of Venice, forcing people to tread on raised walkways. The city itself is sinking, the level of the Adriatic is rising and high tides are becoming more frequent .

26. Venice Lagoon The Venice Lagoon has a surface area of 55,000 sq, meters has and was formed nearly 6,000 years ago. In order to preserve the lagoon and adapt it to existing needs - port, fish farms, land reclamation, transport and industry – for the past 5 centuries man has undertaken increasingly consistent works to achieve hydraulic regulation, mainly by diverting the principal rivers from the Lagoon into the Adriatic Sea, and building numerous reclamation systems on the lower lands to use them for agricultural purposes; in the last 50 years the wetlands have been significantly reduced and the pollution load discharged into the lagoon has been increased. Industrial pollution in the Venice lagoon, 1998

27. Moses Project After more than a decade of scrutiny, the colossal $2.6 billion Moses project, a flexible seawall with a series of flap gates that would stretch along the lagoon and block tides from flooding the city, is ready

28. Iberian Peninsula Climatically, the Iberian Peninsula has hot summers, cold winters, and limited precipitation. Westernmost European peninsula containing Portugal, Spain, and Andorra.

29. Meseta The middle of Spain is a high, dry, flat plateau called the Meseta . In the Meseta it can be very hot in the summer and cold in the winter .

30. Strait of Gibraltar Located at the western entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, this narrow sea- level passage is about 15 kilometers wide and 55 kilometers long.

31. The Rock of Gibraltar Strategically important, Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain by Spain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht; the British garrison was formally declared a colony in 1830. In referendums held in 1967 and 2002, Gibraltarians ignored Spanish pressure and voted overwhelmingly to remain a British dependency.

33. The Ural Mountains The mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia marks the northern part of the (arbitrary) border between the continents of Europe and Asia.

34. Carpathian Mountains The Fagaras Massif in central Romania's Transylvanian Alps forms the most spectacular range of the Carpathian Mountains Located in six countries of East and Central Europe: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Ukraine.

35. Carpathians (left) Apuseni Mountains in Romania’s part of the Carpathians The geologic structure of the inner part of the Western Carpathians is marked by a break running from the east and the south along a line of dislocation in the Earth's crust.

36. Balkan Mts. This is an extension of the Carpathian mountain range, separated from it by the Danube River.

37. Alps The Alps is the collective name for one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria in the east, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany, through to France in the west. The word Alps means mountains.

38. Ibex An ibex challenges intruders in the Alps

39. Caucasus Mountains The Caucasus Mountains form part of the Euro-Asian border between Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

40. Pyrenees Stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Mediterranean in the East, a distance of some 250 miles (402.5km), the mountains of the Pyrenees form a natural barrier between Spain and the Iberian Peninsula in the south and France in the north.

41. Straits The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles are the straits between the European and Southwest Asian sections of Turkey.

42. Karst Landscapes that show the result of limestone dissolution are called karst. Most limestones are formed by the deposition and consolidation of the skeletons of marine invertebrates .

43. Lake Balaton Lake Balaton is the largest lake of Central Europe

44. Sirocco This satellite image shows a dust storm over the Mediterranean Sea. The north African winds, known as Sirocco , blow dust north-west out over the Mediterranean Sea from the Libyan desert to the Italian mainland crossing the island of Sicily and part of Sardinia island to the west.

45. Zuiderzee The Zuiderzee Works is a man-made system of dams, land reclamation and water drainage works, and the largest hydraulic engineering project undertaken by the Netherlands during the twentieth century.

46. The project involved the damming off of the Zuiderzee , a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea , and the reclamation of land in the newly enclosed water body by means of polders .

47. Polder Polder: An area of low-lying land, especially in the Netherlands, that has been reclaimed from a body of water and is protected by dikes.

48. Terpen These high earthen platforms provide safe places during floods and high tides

49. ZuiderZee On the left side is the salty North Sea, and on the right side the freshwater lake created by the 'Afsluitdijk‘ dam. Zuider Zee

50. English Channel Strait of Dover The United Kingdom France

51. Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter . Soft and easily compressed, water is forced out under pressure. Upon drying, peat can be used as a fuel , and is traditionally used for cooking and domestic heating in many countries including Ireland and Scotland , where trees are often scarce.

52. Deforestation Most of Europe was once covered by a hardwood forest. Overgrazing, bad soil management, inappropriate land-use, droughts, fires, and political turmoil, caused considerable deforestation, however, most of the forests of Europe and were reduced to charcoal to supply heat for manufacturing processes .

53. The weather in this otherwise cold climate zone, is moderated by the effects of The North Atlantic Drift which originates from the Gulf Stream along North America and from the northern Sargasso Sea. These waters then slowly flow northward into the Labrador and European Basins eventually becoming the NADC as it enters the Iceland Basin. False-color image of the temperature of the Gulf Stream North Atlantic Drift

54. Gulf Stream The effect of the Gulf Stream is sufficient to cause certain parts of the west of Britain and Ireland to be an average of several degrees warmer than most other parts of those countries.

55. Mistral The mistral/maestral is a cold, northerly katabatic wind flowing into the Gulf of Lion from the southern coast of France. Mistrals are most common during winter and spring, although gale-force events can occur year-round. The wind is characterized by the sinking of cold air generated over the mountains and then funneled through the Garone Valley between the Pyrenees and the Massif Central.

56. North Sea Oil Field North Sea oil and natural gas were first discovered in the 1960s. The North Sea, however, did not emerge immediately as a key non-OPEC oil producing area until the 1980s and 1990s, when major discoveries began coming online. Oil and natural gas extraction in the North Sea's inhospitable climate - cold and windy - and at great depths requires sophisticated offshore technology.

57. Four countries make up the United Kingdom (also known as Great Britain): Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and England. United Kingdom

58. North Sea oil rig While primary oil demand in European Union (EU) countries is projected to increase by 0.4% per year from now to 2030, North Sea output peaked in 1999 and has been on the decline ever since.

59. The global ocean circulation system transports heat throughout the planet. White sections represent warm surface currents. Purple sections represent deep cold currents . Great ocean conveyor

61. What factors contribute to the patterns of heavy and light rainfall on this map?