Bodies of Water

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To help with not only determining what type of body of water to add to your map, this list can also be used to help come up with naming said bodies of water (instead of calling everything “sea”, “lake”, & “river”).

• Arroyo (creek) – a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally. See also wadi.
• Barachois – a lagoon separated from the ocean by a sand bar.
• Basin – a region of land where water from rain or snowmelt drains downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, or dam
• Bay – an area of water bordered by land on three sides, similar to, but smaller than a gulf.
• Bayou – a slow-moving stream or a marshy lake.
• Beck – a small stream.
• Bight – a large and often only slightly receding bay, or a bend in any geographical feature.
• Billabong – see Oxbow lake; a pond or still body of water created when a river changes course and some water becomes trapped. Australian.
• Brook – a small stream.
• 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.
• Creek – a small stream.
• Delta – the location where a river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, or reservoir.
• 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 – a regional term of Scotland used to denote various coastal waters, such as large sea bays, estuaries, inlets, and straits.
• Fjord (fiord) – a submergent landform which has occurred due to glacial activity.
• Geyser – a spring characterized by intermittent discharge of water ejected turbulently & accompanied by steam.
• 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.
• Headland – an area of water bordered by land on three sides.
• Harbor – an artificial or naturally occurring body of water where ships are stored or may shelter from the ocean’s weather and currents.
• 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.
  
• 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.
• Loch – a body of water such as a lake, sea inlet, firth, fjord, estuary or bay.
• Mere – 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 deep, broad trench, either dry or filled with water, surrounding and protecting a structure, installation, or town.
• Ocean – a major body of salty water that covers a large portion of a planet’s surface
• Pool – various small bodies of water such as a swimming pool, reflecting pool, pond, or puddle.
• Pond – a body of water smaller than a lake, especially those of artificial origin.
• Rapids – sections of a river where the bed is a relatively steep gradient causing an increas in water velocity and turbulence.
• Reservoir – a place to store water for various uses, especially drinking water, which can be a natural or artificial
• Rill – a shallow channel of running water. These can be either natural or man-made.
• River – a natural waterway usually formed by water derived from either precipitation or glacial meltwater, and flows from higher ground to lower ground.
• 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.
• 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 ocean.
• Seep – a body of water formed by a spring.
• Slough – several different meanings related to wetland or aquatic features.
• 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.
• 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 a 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.
• Wash – a usually dry creek bed or gulch that temporarily fills with water after a heavy rain, or seasonally.
• Waterfall – a place where water flows over a vertical drop or series of drops

This list excludes wetlands as they are covered in a different lesson of this course.