Surface water is water located on top of land, forming terrestrial (surrounding by land on all sides) waterbodies, and may also be referred to as blue water, opposed to the seawater and waterbodies like the ocean.
The vast majority of surface water is produced by precipitation. As the climate warms in the spring, snowmelt runs off towards nearby streams and rivers contributing towards a large portion of human drinking water. Levels of surface water lessen as a result of evaporation as well as water moving into the ground becoming ground-water. Alongside being used for drinking water, surface water is also used for irrigation, wastewater treatment, livestock, industrial uses, hydropower, and recreation. For USGS water-use reports, surface water is considered freshwater when it contains less than 1,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L) of dissolved solids.
There are three major types of surface water. Permanent (perennial) surface waters are present year round, and includes lakes, rivers and wetlands (marshes and swamps). Semi-permanent (ephemeral) surface water refers to bodies of water that are only present at certain times of the year including seasonally dry channels such as creeks, lagoons and waterholes. Human-made surface water is water that can be continued by infrastructures that humans have assembled. This would be dammed artificial lakes, canals and artificial ponds (e.g. garden ponds) or swamps. The surface water held by dams can be used for renewable energy in the form of hydropower. Hydropower is the forcing of surface water sourced from rivers and streams to produce energy.
Surface water can be measured as annual runoff. This includes the amount of rain and snowmelt drainage left after the uptake of nature, evaporation from land, and transpiration from vegetation. In areas such as California, the California Water Science Center records the flow of surface water and annual runoff by utilizing a network of approximately 500 stream gages collecting real time data from all across the state.
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A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually a freshwater stream, flowing on the surface or inside caves towards another waterbody at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, sea, bay, lake, wetland, or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground or becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to by names such as creek, brook, and rivulet. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities, a stream is defined by its size.
In hillslope geomorphology, a rill is a shallow channel (no more than a few inches/decimeters deep) cut into soil by the erosive action of flowing surface water. Similar but smaller incised channels are known as microrills; larger incised channels are known as gullies. Artificial rills are channels constructed to carry a water supply from a distant water source. In landscape or garden design, constructed rills are an aesthetic water feature. Rills are narrow and shallow channels which are eroded into unprotected soil by hillslope runoff.
In hydrology, snowmelt is surface runoff produced from melting snow. It can also be used to describe the period or season during which such runoff is produced. Water produced by snowmelt is an important part of the annual water cycle in many parts of the world, in some cases contributing high fractions of the annual runoff in a watershed. Predicting snowmelt runoff from a drainage basin may be a part of designing water control projects. Rapid snowmelt can cause flooding.
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