Short answers, pulled from the story.
Land is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water, including all continents and islands. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface. Most of it is covered by regolith, a layer of rock, soil, and minerals forming the outer part of the crust.
One-third of land is covered in trees, another third is used for agriculture, and one-tenth is covered in permanent snow and glaciers. The remainder consists of desert, savannah, and prairie. About 30 percent of land has a dry climate.
Earth's land elevation ranges from 418 metres below sea level at the Dead Sea to 8,848 metres at the summit of Mount Everest. The mean height of land above sea level is about 797 metres, and 98.9% of dry land sits above sea level.
The scientist Alfred Wegener first hypothesized the theory of continental drift in 1912. Researchers developed his idea throughout the 20th century into the now widely accepted theory of plate tectonics, in which Earth's lithosphere is divided into tectonic plates that move over the mantle.
Humans have caused erosion to run 10 to 40 times faster than normal, stripping away half the topsoil of Earth's land surface within the past 150 years. Humans have altered more than three-quarters of ice-free land, and salinization affects at least 20% of all irrigated lands.
The phrase the law of the land first appeared in 1215 in Magna Carta, which inspired its later usage in the United States Constitution. The related idea of common land also originated with medieval English law, referring to collective ownership treated as a common good.