Physical Geography of Water

Whether it's Lake Michigan, the Gulf of Panama, or the River Thames, bodies of water of all shapes and sizes can be found around the globe, and they play a critical role for human beings, who use such bodies of water as a source of drinking water, a means of transporting both goods and people themselves, or a place to engage in water sports, among a plethora of other possible uses. Additionally, many bodies of water provide striking scenes of natural beauty and house important marine ecosystems. Satiate your thirst for knowledge about Earth's oceans, lakes, seas, rivers, waterfalls, bays, and more.

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Physical Geography of Water Encyclopedia Articles

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Featured Articles

Arctic Ocean

Arctic Ocean, smallest of the world’s oceans, centring approximately on the North Pole. The Arctic Ocean and its marginal seas—the Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, Barents, White, Greenland, and Beaufort...

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a zone in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California that has a high concentration of plastic waste. The extent of the patch has been compared to the U.S. state of Texas...

ocean

Ocean, continuous body of salt water that is contained in enormous basins on Earth’s surface. When viewed from space, the predominance of Earth’s oceans is readily apparent. The oceans and their marginal...

Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean, body of salt water covering approximately one-sixteenth of Earth’s total ocean area. The Southern Ocean is made up of the portions of the world ocean south of the Pacific, Atlantic, and...

Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean, body of salt water extending from the 60° S parallel in the south to the Arctic in the north and lying between the continents of Asia and Australia on the west and North America and South...

canals and inland waterways

Canals and inland waterways, natural or artificial waterways used for navigation, crop irrigation, water supply, or drainage. Despite modern technological advances in air and ground transportation, inland...

Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean, body of salt water covering approximately one-fifth of Earth’s surface and separating the continents of Europe and Africa to the east from those of North and South America to the west....

river

River, (ultimately from Latin ripa, “bank”), any natural stream of water that flows in a channel with defined banks . Modern usage includes rivers that are multichanneled, intermittent, or ephemeral in...

Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean, body of salt water covering approximately one-fifth of the total ocean area of the world. It is the smallest, geologically youngest, and physically most complex of the world’s three major...

lake

Lake, any relatively large body of slowly moving or standing water that occupies an inland basin of appreciable size. Definitions that precisely distinguish lakes, ponds, swamps, and even rivers and other...