Comprising the northernmost third of the United Kingdom mainland, lying between 55° and 60°N, Scotland is bounded to the west and north by the Atlantic Ocean, to the east by the North Sea, and to the south by England. Its total area of 78,742 square kilometres includes 1603 square kilometres of water and nearly 800 islands, most of them off the heavily indented west coast, but also including the Orkney and Shetland groups to the north. At its greatest maximum length and breadth, mainland Scotland measures 441 by 248 kilometres, but deep and extensive penetration by sea lochs and firths (estuaries) means that few places are more than 80 kilometres from the sea.

Topographically, Scotland is divided into three main areas. The eponymously mountainous, glaciation-shaped Highlands extend north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, running from Stonehaven on the east coast to Helensburgh on the River Clyde. They are in turn bisected by the fault-line of Glen Mhor (the Great Glen), along which runs the 96-kilometre inland waterway known as the Caledonian Canal, a series of lochs (lakes) linking the North Sea with the Atlantic. In the Cairngorm and Grampian mountain ranges, the region contains the UK’s highest peaks, topped by Ben Nevis at 1,343 metres, though there are also flatter moorland areas, such as Rannoch Moor and parts of the far north-east.

Irrigated by the rivers Forth and Clyde, and dominated by Scotland’s two largest cities – Edinburgh, the capital, and the larger western conurbation of Glasgow – the Central Lowlands contain the bulk of Scotland’s population and industry. Despite their name, they are substantially hilly, with the volcanic ranges of the Sidlaws, the Ochils, the Campsies, and the Pentlands rising as high as 579 metres. In the Southern Uplands, lying below an east-west line drawn approximately from the Lammermuir Hills to Ayrshire, glaciation has left rolling hills, up to 843 metres high, and narrow flat valleys, across terrain that varies from rich arable farmland to high peat moors.

Despite its notorious reputation, the Scottish climate – as with the rest of the UK – is technically a temperate one, thanks to the westward presence of the Gulf Stream. The respective effects of Atlantic and Continental weather systems overall produce milder and wetter conditions to the west of the country, colder and drier in the east. Some two-thirds of Scotland receives more than the average yearly UK rainfall of 1,000 millimetres (although individual areas vary from 635 to 3,600 millimetres), and the annual temperature range is markedly smaller than in southern England, with significant winter snowfall above 450 metres.

The diversity of Scotland’s geography, geology and climate gives rise to wide variations in soil quality. In the western highlands and islands much of the land is poor and rocky, with cultivation only possible in glens and coastal areas, while most arable land lies along the north-eastern coastal plain and in the Lowlands. Forestry occupies around 1.25 million hectares, around 16 percent of the country’s total area, while lochs, rivers and smaller waterways are also abundant features of the landscape, particularly to the north.