The Isua greenstone belt in southwestern Greenland contains the oldest known rocks on Earth, dated at 3.7–3.8 billion years old.

[4] The vegetation is generally sparse, with the only patch of forested land being found in Nanortalik Municipality in the extreme south near Cape Farewell.

The terrain is mostly a flat but gradually sloping icecap that covers all land except for a narrow, mountainous, barren, rocky coast.

The northernmost point of the island of Greenland is Cape Morris Jesup, discovered by Admiral Robert Peary in 1900.

Natural resources include zinc, lead, iron ore, coal, molybdenum, gold, platinum, uranium, hydropower and fish.

Protection of the Arctic environment, climate change, pollution of the food chain, excessive hunting[5] of endangered species (walrus, polar bears, narwhal, beluga whale and several sea birds).

[9] In the far south of Greenland, there is a very small forest in the Qinngua Valley, due to summer temperatures being barely high enough to sustain trees.

There are mountains over 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) high surrounding the valley, which protect it from cold, fast winds travelling across the ice sheet.

It is thought that before the last Ice Age, Greenland had mountainous edges and a lowland (and probably very dry) center which drained to the sea via one big river flowing out westwards, past where Disko Island is now.

Half of the increase was from higher summer melting, with the rest caused by the movements of some glaciers exceeding the speeds needed to balance upstream snow accumulation.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February 2006 that the glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago.

Recently, Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers have started moving faster, satellite data show.

This means that researchers must view old photographs of glaciers and compare them to ones taken today to determine the future of Greenland's ice.

[22] Scientists discovered an asteroid impact crater in the northwestern region of Greenland, buried underneath the ice sheet.