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There are three basic types of freshwater ecosystems: Lentic (slow moving water, including pools, ponds, and lakes), lotic (faster moving water, for example streams and rivers) and wetlands (areas where the soil is saturated or inundated for at least part of the time). Limnology (and its branch freshwater biology) is a study about freshwater ...
This includes the study of lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers, springs, streams, wetlands, and groundwater. [2] Water systems are often categorized as either running or standing . [3] Limnology includes the study of the drainage basin, movement of water through the basin and biogeochemical changes that occur en route.
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. Streamlet: a small stream; rivulet. [38] Subglacial lake
Fresh water may encompass frozen and meltwater in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, snowfields and icebergs, natural precipitations such as rainfall, snowfall, hail/sleet and graupel, and surface runoffs that form inland bodies of water such as wetlands, ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, as well as groundwater contained in aquifers, subterranean ...
Freshwater ecosystems may be lentic (slow moving water, including pools, ponds, and lakes); lotic (faster moving water, for example streams and rivers); and wetlands (areas where the soil is saturated or inundated for at least part of the time). [2]
Lakes and ponds experience much of the same pollution as rivers and streams, but are polluted at a quicker rate due to slower moving waters, no water flow outlets, and amount of water. [16] Standing water circulates much less than moving waters, with the deeper water layers only moving during seasonal changes twice a year. [ 16 ]
Most water in Earth's atmosphere and crust comes from saline seawater, while fresh water accounts for nearly 1% of the total. The vast bulk of the water on Earth is saline or salt water, with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 3.5%, roughly equivalent to 34 grams of salts in 1 kg of seawater), though this varies slightly according to the amount of runoff received from surrounding land.
For example, one widely cited study estimated that Earth has 304 million lakes and ponds, and that 91% of these are 1 hectare (2.5 acres) or less in area. [17] Despite the overwhelming abundance of ponds, almost all of Earth's lake water is found in fewer than 100 large lakes; this is because lake volume scales superlinearly with lake area. [21]