Physical world map

Physical world map shows the shape of the land with shaded relief and colors for elevation. Rivers and lakes are drawn in blue, and dashed lines show country borders. Download the labeled map or use the version without names as a worksheet.

Physical world map
Physical world mapPNG 2200×1249 (1.2 MB)Physical world map (PDF A4) (545 KB)

How to read this map

Named features on this map include Great Dividing Range, Alps, Tian Shan, Ural Mountains, Caucasus Mountains, Himalayas, Andes, Rocky Mountains, North China Plain, Kazakh Steppe, North European Plain, Congo basin, Amazon basin, Gobi Desert, Sahara, Western Plateau, Iberian Peninsula, Ethiopian Highlands, Zagros Mountains, Mount Everest, Ulugh Muztagh. The terrain colors help locate these features within the surrounding lowlands, plateaus and mountain belts.

The mapped river network includes Irrawaddy Delta, Araguaia, Vaal, Aldan, Snake, Columbia, São Francisco, Rhein. Only selected rivers are labeled at this scale; a missing label does not mean that a river is absent.

Greens show lower elevations; tan and brown show higher land, with pale tones toward the highest terrain. Shadows emphasize the slopes. Vertical relief is exaggerated to make landforms easier to read, so the map is not a slope survey. Blue tones distinguish seas from land; the legend is a guide to land elevation, not a chart of water depth.

The relief uses Terrain Tiles, a composite of SRTM, GMTED2010 and ETOPO1 elevation data distributed through the AWS Open Data program. Boundaries, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. These are small-scale educational maps rather than navigation or engineering surveys.

Blank physical map

The blank version keeps the mapped features and removes the place labels. Download it for a geography worksheet or practice identifying the features.

Physical world map without names
Blank version of physical world map.PNG 2200×1249 (1.2 MB)Physical world map: blank (PDF A4) (484 KB)

Features and names

ReferenceName or description
Named physical featureGreat Dividing Range
Named physical featureAlps
Named physical featureTian Shan
Named physical featureUral Mountains
Named physical featureCaucasus Mountains
Named physical featureHimalayas
Named physical featureAndes
Named physical featureRocky Mountains
Named physical featureNorth China Plain
Named physical featureKazakh Steppe
Named physical featureNorth European Plain
Named physical featureCongo basin
Named physical featureAmazon basin
Named physical featureGobi Desert
Named physical featureSahara
Named physical featureWestern Plateau
Named physical featureIberian Peninsula
Named physical featureEthiopian Highlands
Named physical featureZagros Mountains
Named physical featureMount Everest
Named physical featureUlugh Muztagh

Data sources and license

Map design and rendered images: Atlas of Maps, CC BY 4.0. Source databases retain their own licenses; the map license does not replace them.

Frequently asked questions

What does a physical map show?

A physical map shows landforms and water: mountains, plateaus, lowlands, rivers, lakes and seas. This map uses elevation colors and hill shading instead of coloring each country separately.

Can I download physical world map without labels?

Yes. The blank relief map retains the terrain, rivers and outlines but removes place names. Both versions are available as PNG and PDF; the PDF uses A4 paper and can be scaled to US Letter.

Use this map

You can download, print and share this map for free, in class, in school projects, in presentations and on websites, as long as you credit the source: Physical world map · Atlas of Maps (atlasofmaps.com), license CC BY 4.0.

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