A body of water or waterbody[1] (often spelled water body) is any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another planet. The term most often refers to oceans, seas, and lakes, but it includes smaller pools of water such as ponds, wetlands, or more rarely, puddles. A body of water does not have to be still or contained; rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water.[2]
Most are naturally occurring geographical features, but some are artificial. There are types that can be either. For example, most reservoirs are created by engineering dams, but some natural lakes are used as reservoirs. Similarly, most harbors are naturally occurring bays, but some harbors have been created through construction.
Bodies of water that are navigable are known as waterways. Some bodies of water collect and move water, such as rivers and streams, and others primarily hold water, such as lakes and oceans.
Bodies of water are affected by gravity, which is what creates the tidal effects on Earth.[3] Moreso, the impact of climate change on water is likely to intensify as observed through the rising sea levels, water acidification and flooding. This means that climate change has pressure on water bodies.[4]
A weir in Toledo, Spain. Weirs are frequently used to change the height of a riverlevel, prevent floodings, and measure water discharge.
There are some geographical features involving water that are not bodies of water, for example, waterfalls, geysers and rapids.
Arm of the sea – also seaarm, used to describe a sealoch.
Arroyo – (southwest US) (seasonal) a usually-dry bed of a steep-sided stream, gully, or narrow channel that temporarily fills with water after heavy rain. See also wadi.
Canal – an artificial waterway, usually connected to (and sometimes connecting) existing lakes, rivers, or oceans.
Channel – the physical confine of a river, slough or ocean strait consisting of a bed and banks. See also stream bed and strait.
Cove – a coastal landform. Earth scientists generally use the term to describe a circular or round inlet with a narrow entrance, though colloquially the term is sometimes used to describe any sheltered bay.
Gulf – a part of a lake or ocean that extends so that it is surrounded by land on three sides, similar to, but larger than a bay.
Harbor – an artificial or naturally occurring body of water where ships are stored or may shelter from the ocean's weather and currents.
Hot spring – a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater.
Impoundment – an artificially-created body of water, by damming a source. Often used for flood control, as a drinking water supply (reservoir), recreation, ornamentation (artificial pond), or other purpose or combination of purposes. The process of creating an "impoundment" of water is itself called "impoundment."
Inlet – a body of water, usually seawater, which has characteristics of one or more of the following: bay, cove, estuary, firth, fjord, geo, sea loch, or sound.
Kettle (or kettle lake) – a shallow, sediment-filled body of water formed by retreating glaciers or draining floodwaters.
Lagoon – a body of comparatively shallow salt or brackish water separated from the deeper sea by a shallow or exposed sandbank, coral reef, or similar feature.
Lake – a body of water, usually freshwater, of relatively large size contained on a body of land.
Marsh – a wetland featuring grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, and other herbaceous plants (possibly with low-growing woody plants) in a context of shallow water. See also salt marsh.
Mediterranean sea (oceanography) – a mostly enclosed sea that has a limited exchange of deep water with outer oceans and where the water circulation is dominated by salinity and temperature differences rather than winds
Mere – a lake or body of water that is broad in relation to its depth.
Puddle – a small accumulation of water on a surface, usually the ground.
Reflecting pool – a water feature usually consisting of a shallow pool of water, undisturbed by fountain jets, for a reflective surface.
Reservoir – a place to store water for various uses, especially drinking water, which can be a natural or artificial (see lake and impoundment).
Rill – a shallow channel of running water. These can be either natural or human-made. Also: a very small brook; rivulet; small stream.[27][28]
River – a natural waterway usually formed by water derived from either precipitation or glacial meltwater, and flows from higher ground to lower ground.
Rivulet – (UK, US literary) a small or very small stream.[29]
Roadstead – a place outside a harbor where a ship can lie at anchor; it is an enclosed area with an opening to the sea, narrower than a bay or gulf (often called a "roads").
Run – a small stream or part thereof, especially a smoothly flowing part of a stream.
Salt marsh – a type of marsh that is a transitional zone between land and an area, such as a slough, bay, or estuary, with salty or brackish water.
Sea – a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, or a large, usually saline, lake that lacks a natural outlet such as the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea. In common usage, often synonymous with the ocean.
Slough – several different meanings related to wetland or aquatic features.
Source – the original point from which the river or stream flows. A river's source is sometimes a spring.
Shoal – a natural submerged ridge, bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material, and rises from the bed of a body of water to near the surface.
Sound – a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight, wider than a fjord, or it may identify a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land.
Spring – a point where groundwater flows out of the ground, and is thus where the aquifer surface meets the ground surface
Strait – a narrow channel of water that connects two larger bodies of water, and thus lies between two land masses.
Stream – a body of water with a detectable current, confined within a bed and banks.
Stream pool – a stretch of a river or stream in which the water is relatively deep and slow moving.
Subglacial lake – a lake that is permanently covered by ice and whose water remains liquid by the pressure of the ice sheet and geothermal heating. They often occur under glaciers or ice caps. Lake Vostok in Antarctica is an example.
Swamp – a wetland that features permanent inundation of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water, generally with a substantial number of hummocks, or dry-land protrusions.
Swimming pool – an artificial container filled with water intended for swimming.
Tank – (or stock tank, Texas) an artificial pond, usually for watering cattle or other livestock.[31]
Tarn – a mountain lake or pool formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier.
Tide pool – a rocky pool adjacent to an ocean and filled with seawater.
Tributary or affluent – a stream or river that flows into the main stem (or parent) river or a lake.
Vernal pool – a shallow, natural depression in level ground, with no permanent above-ground outlet, that holds water seasonally.
Wadi – a usually-dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally; located in North Africa and Western Asia. See also arroyo (creek).
Wash – a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. See also wadi.
Wetland – an environment "at the interface between truly terrestrial ecosystems and truly aquatic systems making them different from each yet highly dependent on both".[32]
Mitsch, W.J. and J.G. Gosselink. 2007. Wetlands, 4th ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 582 pp.[33]
Citations
^"waterbody noun (pl. -ies) a body of water forming a physiographical feature, for example a sea or a reservoir." New Oxford Dictionary of English
^Langbein, W.B.; Iseri, Kathleen T. (1995). "Hydrologic Definitions: Stream". Manual of Hydrology: Part 1. General Surface-Water Techniques (Water Supply Paper 1541-A). Reston, VA: USGS..
^"brook". merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
^"burn". collinsdictionary.com. Collins. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
^"burn". oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on November 5, 2018. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
^"creek". oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2019. British...especially an inlet...(whereas) NZ, North American, Australian...stream or minor tributary.
^"(US) creek". English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2019. North American, Australian, NZ...A stream, brook, or minor tributary of a river.
^"creek". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC. Retrieved 18 May 2019. U.S., Canada , and Australia…a stream smaller than a river.
^"creek". Collins. Collins. Retrieved 18 May 2019. US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand a small stream or tributary
^"creek". Macmillan Dictionary. Springer Nature Limited. Retrieved 18 May 2019. a narrow stream
^"creek". oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2019. British...especially an inlet
^"creek". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC. Retrieved 18 May 2019. Chiefly Atlantic States and British...a recess or inlet in the shore of the sea.
^"creek". Macmillan Dictionary. Springer Nature Limited. Retrieved 18 May 2019. BRITISH a long narrow area of ocean stretching into the land
^"creek". Collins. Collins. Retrieved 18 May 2019. Chiefly British a narrow inlet or bay
^The first edition of Wetlands by Mitsch and Gosselink was published in 1986 by Van Nostrand Reinhold. Second, third, and fourth (current) editions were published in 1993, 2000, and 2007 respectively by John Wiley & Sons. "Wiley: Wetlands, 4th Edition". Archived from the original on 3 July 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
