The Lakes Portal
A portal dedicated to Lakes
Introduction
A lake is a naturally occurring, relatively large body of water localized in a basin completely surrounded by dry land, with much slower-moving flow than any inflow or outflow streams that serve to feed or drain it. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although, like the much larger oceans, they form part of the Earth's water cycle by serving as large standing pools of storage water. Most lakes are freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater.
Lakes are typically much larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Most lakes are both fed and drained by creeks and rivers, but some lakes are endorheic without any outflow, while volcanic lakes are filled directly by precipitation runoffs and do not have any inflow streams. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars at coastal regions.
Natural lakes are generally found in mountainous areas (i.e. alpine lakes), dormant volcanic craters, rift zones and areas with ongoing glaciation. Other lakes are found in depressed landforms or along the courses of mature rivers, where a river channel has widened over a basin formed by eroded floodplains and wetlands. Some parts of the world have many lakes formed by the chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last ice age. All lakes are temporary over long periods of time, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them. (Full article...)
Selected article -
Satellite image of Sabine Lake, with a portion of Port Arthur visible in the upper left |
Sabine Lake is a bay on the Gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana, located approximately 90 miles (140 km) east of Houston and 160 miles (260 km) west of Baton Rouge, adjoining the city of Port Arthur. The lake is formed by the confluence of the Neches and Sabine Rivers and connects to the Gulf of Mexico through Sabine Pass. It forms part of the Texas–Louisiana border, falling within Jefferson and Orange Counties in Texas and Cameron Parish, Louisiana.
Sabine Lake is one of seven major estuaries along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Much of the Louisiana shore is protected by the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. There is a long history of human habitation around the lake, including Native American settlement dating back at least 1,500 years, European exploration in the eighteenth century, and the growth of Port Arthur in the twentieth century. Today the lake serves as part of the Sabine–Neches Waterway and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and is a center for the shipping and petrochemical industries. (Full article...)General topics
Lake zones |
---|
Lake stratification |
Lake types |
See also |
Need assistance?
Do you have a question about lakes that you can't find the answer to? Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
General images -
Related portals
WikiProjects
Categories
More articles
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
External media
- World Lake Database. International Lake Environment Committee Foundation. – provides a searchable database
- Global Lakes and Wetlands Database. World Wide Fund for Nature. – available for free download
-
Random portal
Purge server cache