Earth’s surface has part(s) land
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only place known in the universe where life has originated and found habitability. While Earth may not contain the largest volumes of water in the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water, extending over 70.8% of the planet with its ocean, making it an ocean world. The polar regions currently retain most of all other water with large sheets of ice covering ocean and land, dwarfing Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers and atmospheric water. The other 29.2% of the Earth's surface is land, consisting of continents and islands, and is widely covered by vegetation. Below the planet's surface lies the crust, consisting of several slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Inside the Earth's crust is a liquid outer core that generates the magnetosphere, deflecting most of the destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation.
Earth has a dynamic atmosphere, which sustains Earth's surface conditions and protects it from most meteoroids and UV-light at entry. It has a composition of primarily nitrogen and oxygen. Water vapor is widely present in the atmosphere, forming clouds that cover most of the planet. The water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas and, together with other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), creates the conditions for both liquid surface water and water vapor to persist via the capturing of energy from the Sun's light. This process maintains the current average surface temperature of 14.76 °C, at which water is liquid under atmospheric pressure. Differences in the amount of captured energy between geographic regions (as with the equatorial region receiving more sunlight than the polar regions) drive atmospheric and ocean currents, producing a global climate system with different climate regions, and a range of weather phenomena such as precipitation, allowing components such as nitrogen to cycle.
Earth is rounded into an ellipsoid with a circumference of about 40,000 km. It is the densest planet in the Solar System. Of the four rocky planets, it is the largest and most massive. Earth is about eight light-minutes away from the Sun and orbits it, taking a year (about 365.25 days) to complete one revolution. The Earth rotates around its own axis in slightly less than a day (in about 23 hours and 56 minutes). The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to the perpendicular to its orbital plane around the Sun, producing seasons. Earth is orbited by one permanent natural satellite, the Moon, which orbits Earth at 384,400 km (1.28 light seconds) and is roughly a quarter as wide as Earth. Through tidal locking, the Moon always faces the Earth with the same side, which causes tides, stabilizes Earth's axis, and gradually slows its rotation.
Earth, like most other bodies in the Solar System, formed 4.5 billion years ago from gas in the early Solar System. During the first billion years of Earth's history, the ocean formed and then life developed within it. Life spread globally and has been altering Earth's atmosphere and surface, leading to the Great Oxidation Event two billion years ago. Humans emerged 300,000 years ago, and have reached a population of 8 billion today. Humans depend on Earth's biosphere and natural resources for their survival, but have increasingly impacted the planet's environment. Humanity's current impact on Earth's climate and biosphere is unsustainable, threatening the livelihood of humans and many other forms of life, and causing widespread extinctions.Surface
Earth's surface is the top layer of Earth's rigid or liquid structure, at the interface with its atmosphere. Earth as an idealized spheroid has a surface area of about 510 million km2 (197 million sq mi). Earth can be divided into two hemispheres. Generally, Earth is divided by latitude into the polar Northern and Southern hemispheres, or by longitude into the continental Eastern and Western hemispheres. Regarding the surface distribution of land and water, Earth can be divided into an oceans-focused water hemisphere and a landmasses-focused land hemisphere.
Most of Earth's surface is made of water, in liquid form or in smaller amounts as ice. 70.8% or 361.13 million km2 (139.43 million sq mi) of Earth's surface consists of the interconnected ocean, making it Earth's global ocean or world ocean. This makes Earth, along with its vibrant hydrosphere, a water world or ocean world, particularly in Earth's early history when the ocean is thought to have possibly covered Earth completely. The world ocean is commonly divided into the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Arctic Ocean, from largest to smallest. The ocean fills the oceanic basins. The ocean floor comprises abyssal plains, continental shelves, seamounts, submarine volcanoes, oceanic trenches, submarine canyons, oceanic plateaus, and a globe-spanning mid-ocean ridge system.
At Earth's polar regions, the ocean surface is covered by a seasonally variable amount of sea ice that often connects with polar land, permafrost and ice sheets, forming polar ice caps.
Earth's land is 29.2%, or 148.94 million km2 (57.51 million sq mi) of Earth's surface area. Earth's land consists of many islands around the globe, but mainly of four continental landmasses, which are, from largest to smallest: Africa-Eurasia, America (landmass), Antarctica, and Australia (landmass). These landmasses are further broken down and grouped into the continents. The terrain varies greatly and consists of mountains, deserts, plains, plateaus, and other landforms. The elevation of the land surface varies from the low point of −418 m (−1,371 ft) at the Dead Sea, to a maximum altitude of 8,848 m (29,029 ft) at the top of Mount Everest. The mean height of land above sea level is about 797 m (2,615 ft).Land can be covered by surface water, snow, ice, artificial structures or vegetation. Most of Earth's land hosts vegetation, but ice sheets (10 %, not including the equally large land under permafrost) or cold as well as hot deserts (33 %) occupy also considerable amounts of it.
The pedosphere is the outermost layer of Earth's continental surface and is composed of soil and subject to soil formation processes. Soil is crucial for land to be arable. Earth's total arable land is 10.7% of the land surface, with 1.3% being permanent cropland. Earth has an estimated 16.7 million km2 (6.4 million sq mi) of cropland and 33.5 million km2 (12.9 million sq mi) of pastureland.The pedosphere and the ocean, with its ocean floor, rest on Earth's crust, which together with parts of the upper mantle form Earth's lithosphere.
Earth's crust is divided into oceanic and continental crusts, while the latter consists of lower density material such as the igneous rocks granite and andesite. Basalt, a denser volcanic rock primarily constitutes the lithosphere of the ocean floors.
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