2. It is believed to be the site of the largest Neoglacial ice-dammed lake in the world. The ice-dammed lake filled and emptied numerous times; the most recent significant lake formed in the 1800s and, when the ice dam burst, drained 40 cubic kilometers of water in a two-day period.

3. The glacier was named for the president of an academic institution that is the oldest on its continent.

Name the glacier.

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2. Carbonate rocks in this region were laid down throughout the entire Cretaceous period. These thick sequences of rock were rapidly uplifted and exposed in the Middle Pleistocene when thick continental lithosphere buckled in the hinge of an adjacent subduction zone.

3. A prominent town in the region is named "beautiful city" in a classical tongue, a sobriquet shared with the site of a 1915 battle that was a turning point for Australia's national identity.

Name the region.

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Answer: Surtsey volcano, about 35 kilometers southwest of Iceland in the North Atlantic Ocean. Photo and clues provided by Wallace Hansen of Lakewood, Colo.

1. The rock in the cliff was once a Jurassic sand sea.

2. This feature is named for a man who was president of what is today the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institution in the world. He was also editor of their yellow-fringed magazine.

3. The national government set aside the site in 1996 despite strong opposition from most local politicians.

Name the feature and its location.

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Answer: Grosvenor Arch, formed from Navajo sandstone, is a prominent feature of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Photo supplied by Thomas McGuire.

1. The karst-forming rock formed during the Pleistocene.

2. The clastics found in this area came from the Sahara Desert.

3. The first settlers to the area were freedom seekers who met as a colony for a religious service of thanksgiving in a cave such as the one shown here. Indeed, the name of this land comes from the word for freedom.

Name the site.

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Answer: Eleuthera, one of the islands of the Bahamas. Photo by Judy Marshall. Contributed by Jacq Marie Jack.

1. These mountains, with the greatest concentration of high peaks, vie for the title of world’s tallest.

2. A rugged valley that dissects these mountains was the inspiration for the mythical Shangri-La.

3. The lake in the foreground is nearly 5500 meters above sea level.

Name the mountain range.

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Answer: Karakoram Mountains of northern Pakistan (near Gilgit). Photo courtesy of Richard Kelly, NASA.

1. By this spring, prolonged drought had dropped the water level in this desert lake by nearly 100 feet, leaving it half empty.

2. The most common rock type in the area formed from a sand sea during the Jurassic period.

3. More recent sediments are filling the dammed lake at a rate that some say could fill it within 100 years. Others argue it could take 700 years.

Name the lake.

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Answer: Lake Powell in Utah. Photo is by Bruce Molnia of USGS and was supplied courtesy of the American Geological Institute archives.

1. The object in this photograph weighs more than 50 tons, has a volume of 9 cubic meters and hit the ground about 80,000 years ago.

2. It is made up of 82 percent iron, 16 percent nickel and 1 percent cobalt as well as various trace elements. Its main minerals are kamacite and taenite. Thin sections show intergrowth of the kamacite and taenite needles in Widmanstätten structure.

3. It is located in the world’s second most sparsely populated country. .

Name the object and the country.

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Answer: Hoba Meteorite, Namibia

1. This national monument is located within a region reputed to be the most arid on Earth. Under these extreme conditions, mineral deposits create multi-colored rows of wind-eroded hills and stratified rock formations. In many areas, dramatic natural sculptures or pillars of eroded salt deposits stand guard over the landscape.

2. The barren formations of this national monument appear to belong more to a lunar landscape than a terrestrial one. Visitors are encouraged to explore the area under the light of a full moon, which produces eerie shadows and hues.

3. The region contains not only a wealth of well-preserved archaeology, but also valuable minerals, including one-fifth of the world’s copper reserves.

Name the feature and country.

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Answer: Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) National Monument in Chile, South America, Atacama Desert. Photo and clues supplied by Geotimes reader Mark Twede of Redding, Calif.

1. The glassy flow in the center of the picture formed 1,300 years ago in the last eruption of this Quaternary shield volcano, one of the largest volcanoes in its country.

2. This photograph of the summit caldera was taken from the volcano's current high point, a peak named for a local chieftain who, one might surmise, was no stranger to peril.

3. The town just to the north has an unbreakable name that stems from a curve in the adjacent river.

Name the feature and country.

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Answer: Newberry Volcano; Oregon, United States. The collapsed caldera of the Newberry volcano with Big Obsidian flow is in the center of the image. Newberry is located 14 miles south of Bend, Ore., on the Deschutes River. Photo supplied by Andrea Ferguson and taken by her husband Jim Ferguson.

1. Now underwater, this feature was a subaerially exposed cave during the last Ice Age approximately 18,000 years ago. More than 400 feet deep, it was thought to be bottomless until the French explorer Jacques Cousteau proved otherwise during a 1970 expedition.

2. Researchers are using core samples from stalactites like those pictured to test a hypothesis that relates Saharan desert dust storm activity to the development of algal blooms and other pathogens in this region.

3. The feature’s name and its appearance from the air are similar to that of an astronomical feature with a gravitational field so intense that not even light can escape.

Name the feature and country.

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Answer: Great Blue Hole, Lighthouse Reef Atoll, Belize. Photo supplied by Steve Blair.

1. Although this Carboniferous teschenite sill shares its name with a cathedral that has the highest medieval spire in the world, the two namesakes sit at opposite ends of their island nation.

2. The “father of modern geology” used a section at the base of the sill to argue that an injection of molten rock had broken apart existing sedimentary layers. This observation contradicted the prevailing Neptunist theory that all rocks settled out of the noachian flood.

3. At the far upper left, a castle sits on a volcanic plug of similar age to the foreground sill. Despite the sheer walls provided by the extinct volcano, the castle was repeatedly under siege during the region’s wars of independence.

Name the geologic feature and adjacent city.

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Answer: Salisbury Crags; Edinburgh. Photo by David Applegate.

1. According to one popular theory, this body was a freshwater lake during the last ice age before rising sea level forced a connection through a narrow opening with a neighboring sea. Today, the body is saline with depths exceeding 2,000 meters.

2. Agricultural and other types of runoff are a major problem for this body of water, which receives the outflow of the second, third and fourth largest rivers of an adjoining “continent.”

3. The peninsula at center left was the site of a war in the 1850s and a cinematically famous mutiny in 1905.

Name the body of water.

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Answer: The Black Sea. Photographed by the OrbView-2 satellite on June 17, 1999, as part of the SeaWIFS Project.

1. As impressive as this cliff looks, what is truly impressive is down below — the deepest known cave in the Western Hemisphere.

2. The cliff and cave are part of a karst terrain formed in Cretaceous limestone.

3. A fatal 1994 expedition established a new hemispheric record for the deepest that humans have traversed underground.

Name the body of water.

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Answer: Huautla Plateau, Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo supplied by Barbara am Ende and taken by Bill Stone.

1. Part of an area called “sacred waters” in the local language, this spring is 25 kilometers south of an island city founded in the 14th century.

2. The bubbly, hot spring pool derives its name from the character of its thermal waters. Fed by groundwater, it sits in a hydrothermal eruption crater that formed about 900 years ago.

3. Orange precipitates visible around the rim of the pool are rich in arsenic, antimony, mercury and thallium, and contain ore grades of gold and silver. This suite of elements highlights the fact that this geothermal system is an active analogue of systems that form epithermal gold deposits in volcanic arcs.

Name the feature and its location.

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Answer: Champagne Pool hot spring in the Waiotapu Thermal Reserve, Central North Island, New Zealand. Supplied by Jeff Hedenquist of Ottawa, Canada.

1. These erosional features are the remains of a truncated drumlin. High spires, pinnacles, cliffs and hoodoos rise up to 150 feet above the shore line and suggest a tall, stacked appearance. Photographs of the area show dramatic morphological changes due to coastal erosion over the past century.

2. This spectacular badlands topography formed on the shore of the world's 14th largest lake (by area), the name of which is a corruption of one bestowed on it in 1660 by the explorer, Creuxius. It translates as "beautiful lake."

3. The area was first settled in the late 1700's, and the elementally named point nearby has one of the country's oldest lighthouses, built in 1871 to replace an older deteriorated one dating to 1824.

Name the feature and the lake.

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Answer: Chimney Bluffs State Park is located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario midway between Rochester and Oswego, N.Y. Photo by Daniel Blumberg.

1. Although the argillaceous sedimentary rocks pictured here are more than a billion years old, this mountain's distinctive appearance is the work of a giant thrust sheet from 75 million years ago and of the carvings of ice sheets in the past half-million years.

2. The peak is located in the world's first international peace park, so designated in 1932.

3. The trail visible in the photo crosses the highest pass in the park in the course of its 18-kilometer journey through montane, sub-alpine and alpine zones.
 

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1. This fissure hosts a spring that empties into a tributary of a river made famous by a composer who was known as a Southerner, but who grew up in New York.

2. The fissure is near a spring group popular with divers. Divers say the feature is more than 100 feet deep and opens into a cave. Three of the other springs are named for the body parts of Mephistopheles. The springs flow from one of the world's most productive karst aquifers.

3. The clothes of the people pictured contradict the area's actual climate. 
 

Name the tributary or the spring group.

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1. Steep cliffs of Jurassic limestone squeeze this river into a narrow channel. The cliffs were once a frontier of the Roman Empire.

2. The oldest Benedictine monastery on this continent, founded in the seventh century, sits directly upstream. It is also the world's oldest monastic brewery, producing beer since the 11th century.

3. The river's color is celebrated in the famous dance tune. 
 

Name the river and either the nearby town or monastery. 

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1. Hermit monks built huts here around A.D. 900 and built a monastery in 1025. The town's church is home to a famous Black Madonna statue.

2. The spectacular columns and cliffs are composed of uplifted and differentially eroded Upper Eocene conglomerates that represent a stack of fluvial and deltaic deposits.

3. The town and mountains share their knife-edged name with a famous volcano located in the West Indies. 
 

Name the town or mountain range. 

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1. The name of the nearby mountain range is shaky.

2. Designated as a national monument in 2001, this place has a (non-ornate) name that is easily confused with a spicy sausage.

3. In addition to a world-class fault exposure, rocks in the area contain abundant Miocene terrestrail mammal fossils as well as marine mollusks, pectens, turitellas and oysters..
 

Name the place. 

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