A body of water or waterbody (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,
sea
The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...
s, 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,
stream
A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...
s,
canals, and other
geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water.
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. 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.
Types
Bodies of water can be categorized into:
# Rain water
# Surface water
# Underground water
Note that there are some geographical features involving water that are not bodies of water, for example,
waterfalls,
geyser
A geyser (, ) is a spring characterized by an intermittent discharge of water ejected turbulently and accompanied by steam. As a fairly rare phenomenon, the formation of geysers is due to particular hydrogeological conditions that exist only in ...
s and
rapids
Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence.
Rapids are hydrological features between a ''run'' (a smoothly flowing part of a stream) and a ''cascade''. ...
.
*Arm of the sea – also
sea
The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...
arm, used to describe a
sea
The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...
loch
''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots language, Scots and Irish language, Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is Cognate, cognate with the Manx language, Manx lough, Cornish language, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh language, Welsh w ...
.
*
Arroyo
Arroyo often refers to:
* Arroyo (creek), an intermittently dry creek
Arroyo may also refer to:
People
* Arroyo (surname)
Places United States
;California
* Arroyo Burro Beach, a public beach park in Santa Barbara County, California
* Arroyo ...
– (southwest US) (seasonal) a usually-dry bed of a steep-sided stream,
gully
A gully is a landform created by running water, mass movement, or commonly a combination of both eroding sharply into soil or other relatively erodible material, typically on a hillside or in river floodplains or terraces. Gullies resemble lar ...
, or narrow channel that temporarily fills with water after heavy rain. See also
wadi.
*
Artificial lake or artificial pond – see
reservoir (impoundment).
*Aubach
*
Barachois – (Canada) a lagoon separated from the ocean by a
sand bar
In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is 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. It o ...
.
*
Basin
*
Bay
A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...
– an area of water bordered by land on three sides, similar to, but smaller than a gulf.
*
Bayou
In usage in the Southern United States, a bayou () is a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area. It may refer to an extremely slow-moving stream, river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), marshy lake, wetland, or creek. They ...
– (southern US) a slow-moving stream or a marshy lake.
*
Beck
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his Experimental music, experimental and Lo-fi music, lo-fi style, and became ...
– (UK) a small stream (esp. with a rocky bottom); creek.
*
Bight – a large and often only slightly receding bay, or a bend in any geographical feature.
*
Billabong – an
oxbow lake
An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. In South Texas, oxbows left by the Rio Grande are called '' resacas''. In Australia, oxbow lakes are call ...
in Australia; a pond or still body of water created when a river changes course and some water becomes trapped.
*Boil – see
seep
*
Bog
A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; a ...
– a type of wetland that accumulates peat due to incomplete decomposition of plant matter.
*Bourn – a brook; stream; small, seasonal stream.
*
Brook
A brook is a small river or natural stream of fresh water. It may also refer to:
Computing
*Brook, a programming language for GPU programming based on C
*Brook+, an explicit data-parallel C compiler
*BrookGPU, a framework for GPGPU programming ...
– a small stream; a creek.
*Brooklet – a small brook.
*
Burn – (Scottish) a small stream; a brook.
*
Canal – an artificial waterway, usually connected to (and sometimes connecting) existing lakes, rivers, or oceans.
*
Channel
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
– the physical confine of a river, slough or ocean strait consisting of a bed and banks. See also
stream bed
A stream bed or streambed is the bottom of a stream or river (bathymetry) or the physical confine of the normal water flow (Channel (geography), channel). The lateral confines or channel margins are known as the stream Bank (geography), banks ...
and strait.
*
Cove – a coastal
landform
A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, ...
. 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.
*
Creek
A creek in North America and elsewhere, such as Australia, is a stream that is usually smaller than a river. In the British Isles it is a small tidal inlet.
Creek may also refer to:
People
* Creek people, also known as Muscogee, Native Americans
...
– (
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
Canada,
New Zealand,
United States) a (narrow) stream that is smaller than a river; a minor tributary of a river; brook.
*
Creek (tidal) – (mainly British) an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove.
*
Delta
Delta commonly refers to:
* Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet
* River delta, at a river mouth
* D (NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta")
* Delta Air Lines, US
* Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19
Delta may also re ...
– the location where a river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, or reservoir.
*
Distributary
A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Distributaries are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributar ...
or
distributary channel
A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Distributaries are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributary ...
– a stream that branches off and flows away from the main stream channel.
*
Drainage basin – a region of land where water from
rain or
snowmelt drains downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, or reservoir.
*
Draw – a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. See also
wadi.
*
Estuary – a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea
*
Firth – (Scottish) various coastal waters, such as large sea bays, estuaries, inlets, and straits.
*
Fjord (''fiord'') – a narrow inlet of the sea between cliffs or steep slopes.
*
Gill – (UK) a narrow stream or rivulet; brook; narrow mountain stream.
*
Glacier – a large collection of ice or a frozen river that moves slowly down a mountain.
*
Glacial pothole – a
giant's kettle.
*
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
Impoundment may refer to:
Water control
* The result of a dam, creating a body of water
** A reservoir, formed by a dam
** Coal slurry impoundment, a specialized form of such a reservoir used for coal mining and processing
* Impounded dock, an enc ...
– 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. Note that the process of creating an "impoundment" of water is itself called "impoundment."
*
Inlet
An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea.
Overview
In marine geogra ...
– 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.
*
Kill – used in areas of
Dutch influence in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
,
New Jersey and other areas of the former
New Netherland colony of
Dutch America
The Netherlands began its colonization of the Americas with the establishment of trading posts and plantations, which preceded the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. While the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 ...
to describe a strait, river, or arm of the sea.
*
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.
*
Lick
Lick may refer to:
* Licking, the action of passing the tongue over a surface
Places
* Lick (crater), a crater on the Moon named after James Lick
* 1951 Lick, an asteroid named after James Lick
* Lick Township, Jackson County, Ohio, United State ...
— a small watercourse or an ephemeral stream
*
Loch
''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots language, Scots and Irish language, Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is Cognate, cognate with the Manx language, Manx lough, Cornish language, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh language, Welsh w ...
– (Scottish) a body of water such as a lake, sea inlet, firth, fjord, estuary or bay.
*
Mangrove swamp
Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fre ...
– a
saline
Saline may refer to:
* Saline (medicine), a liquid with salt content to match the human body
* Saline water, non-medicinal salt water
* Saline, a historical term (especially US) for a salt works or saltern
Places
* Saline, Calvados, a commune in ...
coastal habitat of
mangrove trees and shrubs.
*
Marsh – a wetland featuring grasses,
rushes, reeds,
typha
''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in A ...
s,
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
Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensionless and equal ...
and temperature differences rather than winds
*
Mere
Mere may refer to:
Places
* Mere, Belgium, a village in East Flanders
* Mere, Cheshire, England
* Mere, Wiltshire, England
People
* Mere Broughton (1938–2016), New Zealand Māori language activist and unionist
* Mere Smith, American televisi ...
– a lake or body of water that is broad in relation to its depth.
*
Mill pond – a
reservoir built to provide flowing water to a
watermill.
*
Moat
A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...
– a deep, broad trench, either dry or filled with water, surrounding and protecting a structure, installation, or town.
*
Mud puddle
A puddle is a small accumulation of liquid, usually water, on a surface. It can form either by pooling in a depression on the surface, or by surface tension upon a flat surface.
A puddle is generally shallow enough to walk through, and too sm ...
*
Ocean – a major body of salty water that, in totality, covers about 71% of the Earth's surface.
*
Oxbow lake
An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. In South Texas, oxbows left by the Rio Grande are called '' resacas''. In Australia, oxbow lakes are call ...
– a U-shaped lake formed when a wide meander from the mainstem of a river is cut off to create a lake.
*
Phytotelma – a small, discrete body of water held by some plants.
*
Plunge pool – a depression at the base of a waterfall.
*Pool – various small bodies of water such as a
swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...
,
reflecting pool, pond, or puddle.
*
Pond – a body of water smaller than a lake, especially those of artificial origin.
*
Port – a maritime facility where ships may dock to load and discharge passengers and cargo.
*
Pothole
A pothole is a depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affected area. Water ...
– see kettle
*
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 man-made. Also: a very small brook; rivulet; small stream.
*
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.
*
Roadstead
A roadstead (or ''roads'' – the earlier form) is a body of water sheltered from rip currents, spring tides, or ocean swell where ships can lie reasonably safely at anchor without dragging or snatching.United States Army technical manual, TM 5- ...
– 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
Run(s) or RUN may refer to:
Places
* Run (island), one of the Banda Islands in Indonesia
* Run (stream), a stream in the Dutch province of North Brabant
People
* Run (rapper), Joseph Simmons, now known as "Reverend Run", from the hip-hop group ...
– 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
The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean 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
The Dead Sea ( he, יַם הַמֶּלַח, ''Yam hamMelaḥ''; ar, اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, ''Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū''), also known by other names, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank ...
. In common usage, often synonymous with the ocean.
*
Sea loch
''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch.
In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spelling ...
– a sea inlet loch.
*
Sea lough
''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch.
In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spel ...
– a fjord, estuary, bay or sea inlet.
*
Seep – a body of water formed by a spring.
*
Slough
Slough () is a town and unparished area in the unitary authority of the same name in Berkshire, England, bordering west London. It lies in the Thames Valley, west of central London and north-east of Reading, at the intersection of the M4 ...
– 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
Spring(s) may refer to:
Common uses
* Spring (season), a season of the year
* Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy
* Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water
* Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a ...
.
*
Shoal
In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is 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. It ...
– 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
Spring(s) may refer to:
Common uses
* Spring (season), a season of the year
* Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy
* Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water
* Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a ...
– a point where
groundwater flows out of the ground, and is thus where the
aquifer surface meets the ground surface
*
Strait
A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean channe ...
– a narrow channel of water that connects two larger bodies of water, and thus lies between two land masses.
*
Stream
A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a 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 stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long large streams are ...
— a small stream; rivulet.
*
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 swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...
– a wetland that features permanent inundation of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water, generally with a substantial number of
hummock
In geology, a hummock is a small knoll or mound above ground.Bates, Robert L. and Julia A. Jackson, ed. (1984). “hummock.” Dictionary of Geological Terms, 3rd Ed. New York: Anchor Books. p. 241. They are typically less than in height and ...
s, or dry-land protrusions.
*
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...
– an artificial container filled with water intended for swimming.
*Tank – (or stock tank, Texas) an artificial pond, usually for watering cattle or other livestock.
*
Tarn – a mountain lake or pool formed in a
cirque
A (; from the Latin word ') is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from Scottish Gaelic , meaning a pot or cauldron) and (; ). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform ...
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)
An arroyo (; from Spanish arroyo , "brook"), also called a wash, is a dry stream, creek, stream bed or gulch that temporarily or seasonally fills and flows after sufficient rain. Flash floods are common in arroyos following thunderstorms.
'' ...
.
*
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".
See also
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Glossary of landforms
References
Sources
* Mitsch, W.J. and J.G. Gosselink. 2007. ''Wetlands, 4th ed.'',
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 582 pp.
[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. ]
Citations
External links
Types of Water Bodies
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