| Term | Definition |
|---|
| contamination | The process of becoming unclean. |
| drainage basin | An area drained by a major river and its tributaries. |
| groundwater | Water that fills the cracks and spaces in underground soil and rock layers. |
| stream channel | Moving water that carves a narrow pathway into the ground. |
| watershed | An ecosystem where all water runoff drains into a single body of water. |
| deposition | Process in which sediment is laid down in new locations. |
| erosion | The process by which natural forces move weathered rock and soil from one place to another. |
| meander | A looplike bend in the course of a river. |
| velocity | The speed and direction of a moving object. |
| water table | Upper surface of the zone of saturation. |
| discharge | The volume of water transported by a stream in a given amount of time. |
| floodplain | The land that gets covered by water from a stream or river during a flood. |
| river basin | All the land that is drained by a river and its tributaries. |
| water cycle | The continuous movement of water between Earth's surface and the air, changing from liquid to gas to liquid. |
| zone of saturation | Lower region of groundwater where all the pore spaces in a rock or sediment are filled with water. |
| coriolis effect | The way Earth's rotation makes winds in the Northern Hemisphere curve to the right and winds in the Southern Hemisphere curve to the left. |
| surface current | A horizontal movement of ocean water that is caused by wind and that occurs at or near the ocean's surface. |
| wave | The movement of energy through a body of water. |
| density current | Circulation pattern in the ocean that forms when a mass of more dense seawater sinks beneath less dense seawater. |
| thermocline | In water, a distinctive temperature transition zone that separates and upper layer that is mixed by the wind and colder, deep layer that is not mixed. |
| salinity | A measure of the amount of dissolved salts and other solids in a given amount of liquid. |
| upwelling | The movement of deep, cold, and nutrient-rich water to the surface. |
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