Water science news, explainers, and statistics covering freshwater, hydrology, lakes, rivers, groundwater, ice, and Earth’s connected water systems.
Animals with “sea” in their common name range from fully marine mammals to fishes that spend part of their lives in freshwater. The word offers a habitat clue, not a biological classification. Some names describe resemblance to a land animal, while others arose through fishing, trade or regional usage. The examples below use accepted names…
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Lake Ontario water levels are best checked through a date-stamped official dashboard, because a single number can describe a local gauge, a lake-wide daily mean or a monthly average. The International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board posts a weekly regulation summary with the lake level, outflow and comparisons to historical statistics, all identified by date.…
The best continental map of North America’s major rivers and lakes is the Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s North American Lakes and Rivers, 2023. It combines coastlines, major linear waterways and major lake or reservoir polygons across Canada, the United States and Mexico in one harmonized dataset. The map’s reference scale is 1:1,000,000. It is designed…
Utah’s major lakes form several distinct systems rather than one simple north-to-south ranking. The most useful statewide starting point is the official Utah Lakes NHD layer, which maps lakes, ponds and reservoirs together with marshes and playas. Its searchable feature service lets readers inspect individual polygons instead of relying on a small static image. The…
