Hydrosphere

Region above the water table where pore spaces are not completely filled with water, and where water is held by capillarity.

A body of permeable rock or regolith saturated with water and through which groundwater moves.

A channel system consisting of a tangled network of two or more smaller branching and reuniting channels that are separated by islands or bars.

The passageway in which stream flows.

The formation of a more ordered liquid from a less ordered gas.

A line that separates streams flowing towards opposite sides of a continent, usually into different oceans.

The line that separates adjacent drainage basins.

The total area that contributes water to a stream.

The process by which a liquid is converted to its vapor.

A measure of the vertical drop over a given horizontal distance.

All the water contained in the spaces within bedrock and regolith.

The movement of water between the various reservoirs of the hydrosphere.

The totality of the Earth's water, including the oceans, lakes, streams, water underground, and all the snow and ice, including glaciers.

Water that falls as rain, then penetrates into the soil where it becomes part of the groundwater.

The material that is moved or carried by a natural transporting agent, such as a stream, the wind, a glacier, or waves, tides, and currents.

A looplike bend of a stream channel.

The flow of groundwater, including the vertical flow down from the surface and the lateral flow of water in the saturated zone.

A measure of how easily a solid allows a fluid to pass through it.

The addition of water to the saturated zone of a groundwater system.

The groundwater zone in which all openings are filled with water.

A flow of groundwater emerging naturally at the ground surface.

A body of water that carries detrital particles and dissolved substances and flows down a slope in a definite channel.

Water that drains off the surface of the land after rain.

Water vapor released from the surface of a leaf.

The upper surface of the saturated zone of groundwater.

The loss of mass from a glacier.

The additions of mass of a glaciers.

The smallest formal unit of a body of sediment or sedimentary rock.

The progressive breaking off of icebergs from a glacier that terminates in deep water.

A bowl-shaped hollow on a mountainside, open downstream, bounded upstream by  a steep slope (headwall), and excavated mainly by frost wedging and by glacial abrasion and plucking.

A deep, gaping fissure in the upper surface of glacier.

The part of the Earth's surface that remains perennially frozen.

A line that marks the level on a glacier where net mass loss equals net gain.

A deep, glacially carved valley submerged by the sea.

The modification of the land surface by the action of glacier ice.

A permanent body of ice, consisting largely of recrystallized snow, that shows evidence of downslope or outward movement, due to the stress of its own weight.

Snow that gradually becomes denser and denser until it is no longer permeable to air.

The solid form of H₂O

A mass of ice that covers mountain highlands, or low-lying lands in high latitudes.

Continent-sized mass of ice that covers nearly all the land surface within its margins.

Floating sheets of ice, hundreds of meters thick, that occupy large embayments along the coast of Antarctica.

A time in the past when both the climate and global ice cover were similar to those of today.

An accumulation of drift deposited beneath or at the margin of a glacier and having a surface form that is unrelated to the underlying bedrock.

A land area beyond the limit of glaciers where low temperature and frost action are important factors in determining landscape characteristics.

Sediment, soil, or bedrock that remains continuously at a temperature below 0^oC for an extended time.

A thin veneer of ice on polar oceans that covers approximately two-thirds of the area of the Earth's persistent ice cover.

Precipitation that consists of solid H₂O in crystalline form.

The outer, lower margin of a glacier.

Wave-washed sediment along a coast, extending throughout the surf zone.

An effect that causes any body that moves freely with respect to the rotating solid Earth to veer toward the right in the northern hemisphere and toward the left in the southern hemisphere, regardless of the initial direction of the moving body.

The process by which surface water thickens and sinks.

The average flow of water in a current over the full depth of the Ekman spiral.

An increase in the area of land exposed above sea level resulting from uplift of the land and/or fall or sea level.

A large subcircular current system of which each major ocean current is a part.

A current, within the surf zone, that flows parallel to the coast.

A generally ridge-like structure composed chiefly of the calcareous remains of sedentary marine organisms such as corals and algae.

The measure of the sea's saltiness; expressed in parts per thousand.

A zone of ocean water lying beneath the surface zone, characterized by a marked decrease in temperature.

Global patterns of water circulation propelled by the sinking of dense cold salt water.

The twice-daily rise and fall of the ocean surface resulting from the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Sun.

The process by which subsurface waters flow upward and replace the water moving away.

The effective lower limit of wave motion, which is half of the wavelength.

The distance between the crests or troughs of adjacent waves.