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Pond

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Recreation

   A pond in Peterhof formal garden. In a baroque gareden such as this, it
       would normally have been called a basin, following French practice.
                                                                   Enlarge
   A pond in Peterhof formal garden. In a baroque gareden such as this, it
       would normally have been called a basin, following French practice.

                               Two people reflected in a fish pond Enlarge
                                       Two people reflected in a fish pond

                     Close-up of pond in the forests of Samothraki island.
                                                                   Enlarge
                     Close-up of pond in the forests of Samothraki island.

   A pond is typically a body of water smaller than a lake. However the
   difference between a pond and an artificial lake is subjective. They
   are both formed by ponding water, either by excavating a hollow in
   which water may lie or by forming a dam to impound the water in a
   valley. The techniques may be combined to form a reservoir in flat
   country by enclosing an area with an embankment. Such a pond, unless
   very small, is usually called a reservoir. In some cultures, the
   meaning has been extended to include small bodies of water impounded
   naturally. (Oxford English Dictionary)

   Scientifically, a pond is any body of water where light is found in the
   entire body of water. A lake is any body of water that has a profundal
   zone; there is as limit of effective light penetration for organisms.
   Hence, Lake Superior can theoretically be defined as Pond Superior
   because light does extend to the bottom of the "lake".

Nomenclature

   In origin, pond is a variant form of the word pound, meaning a
   confining enclosure. As straying cattle are enclosed in a pound so
   water is enclosed in a pond. In earlier times, the uses of ponds were
   utilitarian; as stew ponds, mill ponds and so on. In medieval and
   baroque gardens, artificial bodies of water were called ponds or
   basins. As landowners began to decorate their parks with naturalistic
   bodies of water, they chose to distance their new, generally larger,
   decorative ponds from the prosaic and called them lakes. In this seems
   to lie the origin of the size distinction between lake and pond.

   Also, where minerals such as gravel were extracted, the remaining hole
   might fill with water which, in time came to look natural. In some
   areas, such as Surrey such pools were called ponds. (An exalple is
   Frensham Ponds, though even in Wimbledon, which was in Surrey, such
   pools are meres.) This association of the pond name with a
   natural-seeming pool seems to have been carried abroad with emigrants
   so that in places like the United States, natural pools are often
   called ponds. Much of this article is written on the basis of this
   American view.

   A pond is characterized as being a small body of water that is shallow
   enough for sunlight to reach the bottom, permitting the growth of
   rooted plants at its deepest point. Seldom do ponds reach more that
   3.6-4.5 meters (12 to 15 feet) in depth.

   Pond usually describes small bodies of water, generally smaller than
   one would require a boat to cross. Another definition is that a pond is
   a body of water where even its deepest areas are reached by sunlight or
   where a human can walk across the entire body of water without being
   submerged. In some dialects of English, pond normally refers to small
   artificially created bodies of water.

   Though not generally accepted, some regions of the United States define
   a pond as a body of water with a surface area of less than 10 acres
   (40,000 m²).

   Regional differences include the use of the word pond in New England,
   and Maine in particular, for relatively large waterbodies. For example,
   Great Pond, Maine, is over 10 square miles in area.

   In areas which were covered by glaciers in the past, some ponds were
   created when the glaciers retreated. These ponds are knowns as kettle
   ponds . Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts is a well known example.
   Kettle ponds are usually quite deep and clean because they are fed by
   underground aquifers rather than streams.

   Another suggested difference between ponds and lakes is that lakes are
   fed by rivers, creeks, and/or springs, while ponds are usually the
   result of rain runoff, modest springs, or perhaps a very small stream.
   Also, lakes tend to have much more irregular shorelines, with coves and
   so forth, while ponds tend to allow one to take them all in visually
   from a single location. Or, if the lake does have regular shorelines,
   then it tends to at the same time be a substantial body of water (e.g.,
   Lake Okechobee). Lastly, while ponds may allow water to escape via some
   fairly modest route, lakes that allow such escape usually make use of
   more substantial means (creeks, rivers, etc.).

Characteristics

   Typically, a pond has no surface outflow draining off water and ponds
   are often spring-fed. Hence, because of the closed environment of
   ponds, such small bodies of water normally develop self contained
   eco-systems. Ponds in heavily vegetated areas also display the
   formation of " scum", which is a common term for dead and decaying
   vegetation condensing on top of the water. A contributor to this is the
   presence of algae, which multiply quickly in a nutrient-rich eutrophic
   pond exposed to strong daylight. Decaying flora provide significant
   amounts of such nutrients.

   In medieval times in Europe, it was typical for many monasteries and
   castles (small, partly self-sufficient communities) to have fish ponds.
   These are still common in the East Asia (notably Japan), where koi may
   be kept.

   The term is also used for temporary accumulation of water from runoff
   (ponded water).

   There are various regional names for naturally occurring ponds. In
   Scotland, one of the terms is lochan.

   The word "pond" is sometimes also used to refer to the Atlantic Ocean
   in the expression "across the pond" (a deliberate idiomatic
   understatement).

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pond"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
