Talk:Lake

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Lake was the Article Improvement Drive for the week starting on 10 May 2005. For more details, see the Article Improvement Drive history.

Lake is part of WikiProject Lakes, a WikiProject which aims to systematically improve lake-related articles using the tools on the Project page. You are welcome and encouraged to edit the article attached to this page and to join the project.

-- Is it just me, or does the term 'deranged' for the drainage system in Canada seem a little unscientific and confusing? This should be changed to the proper term for whatever the author of that part is referring to. "Unusual" would be a much better term.

Pizza Puzzle asks me (in his edit summary) to cite a source for there being a size requirement for a lake to be considered a sea. Fine. I happily do so. My copy of Chambers Dictionary includes under sea, "great (esp. salt) lake." Note the word great. Small lakes are never called seas.

Precisely where the cut-off point is irrelevant - my only edit has been to say that the lake must be "of sufficient size" if it's to be called a sea. I have not stated what that size is. That's open for interpretation. Evercat 19:41 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You are wrong and so is your dictionary. A lake can be a sea. The sufficient size is simply that it must be of, at least, lake size. Pizza Puzzle

PP, you asked for a source, and you got one. It is not logical to simply say "your source is wrong"; the burden of proof in this argument has been switched back to you. Produce a contrary source that trumps the dictionary, if you like (or can); meantime please refrain from blanket reverts without supporting evidence. - Hephaestos 20:06 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ive stated one. sea is very clear. Pizza Puzzle

My copy of Wetzel's Limnology characterizes the Caspian Sea as a lake, but is a little ambivalent about the Black Sea. The handful of lakes with "Sea" in the name are basically grandfathered in, with perhaps the lone exception of Salton Sea - "Dead Lake" would be a very confusing change! If you flooded the entire state of Nevada today, it's highly unlikely the Board on Geographical Names would be willing to call it a "sea" and not a "lake". Stan 20:53 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The criteria for being a sea have little to do with size. The first question is, "Does its surface lie at the general sea level or below?" Thus The Great Lakes and the Great Salt Lake of North America are lakes. The Dead Sea is a sea.

There is however, inconsistency in naming seas. The question of an outflow other than evaporation is relevant, as in the case of the Aral Sea but the Great Salt Lake and (I think) Lake Balkhash have no exit flow on the surface.

As far as the Black Sea goes, it is no different from the Sea of Japan or the Baltic Sea. It is at sea level and connected to the generality of the seas of the world. It does have one characteristic of an ocean, in that it lies between two geological continental plates. But so does the Sea of Japan. Such very small "oceans" can not have been recognised as such until the concept of plate tectonics was recognised. By that time they had come to be called seas and there is little point in trying to change that. So here size is relevant. RJP 09:21, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I put the periglacial lake up with the definition because 'lake' is here defined in terms of water surrounded by land and a periglacial lake, while still being a lake, is not surrounded by land. Therefore, without accounting for the periglacial lake's exceptional nature, we have not defined 'lake'. The asphalt Trinidal Lake is a similar problem since it is not made of water but if we want to be thorough, it should be accounted for - perhaps by discounting it.

By the way, 'deranged' seems to me a much better word than 'unusual' in the case of the drainage of the Canadian Shield. It says exactly the appropriate thing. The region's exposure to the ice sheet has disturbed or destroyed the arrangement of its drainage. See Oxford English Dictionary. (RJP 19:06, 23 May 2005 (UTC))

Hi there! this page states the biggest 'fresh water' lake in Europe is Balaton in Hungary (596sq.km). Isn't the water fresh enough in Ladoga Lake in Russia (17.700sqkm)?

I agree, I don't think this can be right, unless you apply some strange definition of 'Europe'. And given the gap between 17,700 square kilometers listed for Ladoga and 592 listed in the article for Balaton, not only is this not a close race, but I'd be surprised if there weren't several other lakes intermediate in size between Ladoga and Balaton. there is more to it than thisBold text there is more Ladoga is probably the largest lake in Europe. The largest lake in Finland is Saimaa with (4.400sqkm). Its also said to be the fourth largest lake in Europe. -vegemite

Contents 1 Improvement really needed 2 Lakes 3 ULTRA super massive article overhaul 4 Lake Size 5 Ecology & life cycle 6 Gallery and Trivia 7 Cultural & Social impact & transportation 8 Artificial lakes

[edit] Improvement really needed

Someone should really consider organizing this article wholly again: its structure is quite bad, somewhat "unmature" in my opinion. Also the factual accuracy may not be very good -- at least the section "notable lakes" was the WORST I've EVER seen in the English Wikipedia!! I mean, I've seen much of text with non-neutral attitudes and occasional mistakes, but this had three false facts in about 1000 characters!

The errors included depth of Baikal, largest lakes in Europe and elevation of Dead Sea, plus the list had one quite disputed view. As far as I know, Lake Maracaibo is not lake in the real sense -- if it is a lake, Black Sea would do as well, even the Mediterranean! I corrected the mistakes and commented on Maracaibo.

80.221.61.8 20:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lakes

Small seas are lakes, and lakes are plainly small bodies of water surrounded by land which are freshwater.

Mmmmm ... a lake does not necessarily have to be fresh water ;) Em3rald 00:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ULTRA super massive article overhaul

I've made some drastic changes to this article ... too many to note all at once. Read over the article, and please feel welcome to fix anything you see that needs it. I have checked it a few times, but it's 2:00 am where I am, so it is more than possible that I have made a few mistakes.

The are two areas that still irritate me with this article: Lack of citation (most of what I did was intra-wiki), and more particularly the redundancy between Origin of natural lakes and Types of lakes. I think a small amount of redundancy is unavoidable, though. Does this take away from the overall presentation of the article?

Finally, please discuss your edits here! And remember that nearly all edits (particularly on an article such as this one) are done in good faith, not with malicious intent. Cheers! Em3rald 08:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Great improvement! Long needed. The lead is a substantial improvement but is still substantially in need of improvement ;-) I think actually it could do with a brief discussion about the geographical definitions of a "lake" and contrast that with the toponym "Lake ..." - and ideally with reference to named sources.

I suggest something along the lines of "life cycle of a lake" as a section heading. The notable lakes section and the gallery could do with an overhaul (i.e. trimming) and as for trivia... well, we wouldn't see a "trivia" section in Britannica, would we? :p Photographs, while pretty, are actually uninformative. What we really need are illustrative maps to indicate possible configurations scale, shapes (see the list of lakes in Norway for a really nice instance of this), bathymetry, geological structure etc.

There is still next to nothing about ecology, which I find slightly surprising. The section on limnology seems to describe the science of limnology than it describes its findings! I wonder whether an illustrate diagram of lake ecology would be possible or helpful.

Also not mentioned at all is the water cycle. I think the article should at least describe something basic like what position in the water cycle lakes hold, especially bearing in mind that the audience of Wikipedia (and this article in particular) is more likely to be schoolkids than professional geographers!

Oh and I would also stylistically suggest that we cut down at least a little on the use of italic text. While it can be good for emphasis, in an encyclopedia this can almost invariably be done better through good writing style rather than changing the font.

I wondered whether cultural or social impact is worth considering. For instance, many settlements are founded near lakes, and lakes often do serve many social purposes (indeed they are often created for social purposes, including cultural - recreational - ones). This may also be a way to "absorb" anything useful from the trivia section.

Part of social impact is human transportation. What part have lakes played in human transportation networks? Presumably they are generally a hinderance to road building, but have been helpful for those societies that make extensive use of river navigation? Are there substantially different means of navigating lakes than navigating the open sea? I can imagine that it affects boat design significantly, and presumably there are many cultures whose sole maritime experience has been as lake-farers? On the flip side, are there any notable bridges over lakes rather than rivers or channels? This also reminds me - though it would be Norwaycruft to include it - of the story of Halfdan the Black, a Norwegian king who navigated a lake by crossing it while it was frozen, but unfortunately happened across a section that had been weakened by cow dung (I love Norwegian stories!), fell in, and drowned. :-)

Overall great work on this improvement but there's lots more to do. Most fundamentally, actually getting some decent references! TheGrappler 18:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I am going to create a sub-heading for several of your points because I think they merit dedicated discussion. :D Em3rald 02:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lake Size

Does a body of water really need to be of considerable size to be a lake? I've seen some small things called lakes. --Lethargy 21:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

This is something I have been grappling with for a while, actually. It appears that the term "lake" is rather "qualitative" as opposed to "quantitative". All of the texts that I have read simply mention "considerable size", but it also appears as if the term "considerable" is highly relative. For example, one text states that a lake can refer to any puddle of fluid which is unusual under normal circumstances - which could, therefore, mean that a cup of coffee spilled on the floor could be considered a lake. I am going to see if there is a better technical description of defining a lake, perhaps in cartography. Em3rald 02:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The key here is discuss the definition, with reference to the standard works on the topic. And probably also talk about the purely toponymical appelation "Lake X" which may or may not correlate well with a particular geographer's definition. TheGrappler 11:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Some new developments. I contacted the USGS with regard to this dilemma, basically requesting reference material which we could cite about the discussion itself. Here is the reply:

As indicated in the FAQ to which you refer, there are no official definitions for these terms, and we know of no definition or source to quote that provides any such definitive answer. The fact is, that to be classified as a lake, size is of no relevance. It might be to some, but then only perhaps to them, and if to another that size might be different; it is in fact, application driven if the size criterion is in the definition. -gnis_manager(at)usgs.gov

So, while this doesn't give us the ultimate answer, it does, however, provide some content for discourse. How does one cite an email, though? Perhaps we could put the Lake size section at the top of the TALK page and somehow encourage readers to review the discussion? I am not 100% of Wiki protocol at this point. Any thoughts? Another source (anecdotal) tells me the following:

While USGS note that there’s not a true “official” definition of a “Lake”, there’s certainly a cartographer’s convention dating back at least to the early 20th century, likely earlier, and common in at least the Northeast US: A lake has a surface area of 10 acres (about 40000 m2) or more. Less, and it’s a pond. -uncitable reference

Can anyone assist in verifying this information? Any reliable sources to cite? Em3rald 03:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice! It is perfectly possible to cite an email (most good guides to Harvard referencing explain how) but not on Wikipedia - only reliable published sources should be cited. But it does at least confirm the fact we are looking to cite - that a lake (at least, as defined by the USGS) has no size requirements. TheGrappler 19:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ecology & life cycle

This part definitely requires expansion. However, the life cycle of a lake presents a number of obstacles. If we are dealing with the creation of and eventual disappearance of a lake, we have to deal with several different types of lake. On the other hand, if we are referring to life cycles of organisms within the lake, this presents a plethora of difficulties - number of organisms, etc. Em3rald 02:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Life cycle: I meant of the lake itself, not the organisms. You're right: there's a structural problem here in that the formation processes can differ so there will be redundancy with types of lake. I'm not sure what's the best way round this! Ecology: clearly needs more work, but different lakes can be very different types of ecosystem (fresh/saltwater, as well as issues created simply by scale e.g. the Great Lakes will be very different to small reservoirs. TheGrappler 10:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gallery and Trivia

While I admit, these entries are very different from some other encyclopedias, I don't think it's a bad idea to include them. In my own set of old enclyclopedia britannicas from the 1970s (haha), there were entire sections dedicated to photographs, and I used to love those parts. In this way, I think the gallery is valuable. And the trivia I think is valuable, but could indeed be absorbed into other portions of the article. Finally, the notable lakes section is interesting, and I think holds merit, but could actually be an entire article unto itself. Em3rald 02:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I didn't want them to be got rid of, and even if they are spun off, a summary should be left here (that's what "summary style" requires). What needs to happen though, is a more careful selection. Why are these particular photographs/factoids being included? What are we trying to explain or inform readers about? We could have a gallery of very pretty sunsets over lakes but that wouldn't really add encyclopedic value. A couple of the more famous lakes it may be worth including images of (I still think this article really misses some maps: a map of Lake Michigan is more informative than a photograph from its bank) but perhaps we should concentrate on showing a spread, for instance, of types of lakes, and lake environments, and maybe highlighting the cultural or social side of things (for instance, a recreational lake; a hydroelectric dam fed by a lake; a reservoir; a fishing boat an a lake?). There are enough possible themes that would still be many photographs to display. I think that it's better if they are all carefully chosen to illustrate many aspects of the article rather than "that one is a pretty sunset" as the primary means of selection! :-) TheGrappler 11:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural & Social impact & transportation

I think these two notions are very strongly tied. But this could also prove to be a large enough subsection to be its own article. Em3rald 02:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Even if spun off as its own article, there should still be a summary left here, though. TheGrappler 11:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial lakes

I'm writing an article in which I was going to include the term man-made lake. Then I thought better of it and decided the gender-neutral term should be artificial lake. Well, "man-made lake" redirects to Reservoir (water), while "artificial lake" redirects to lake, where one must scroll down to find the section on artificial lakes that says the main article is at "reservoir". It seems like the redirect of "artificial lake" could go directly to "reservoir". Unless not all artificial lakes are considered reservoirs, in which case a separate article is needed. Katr67 19:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

You have a very valid point, and I think it is safe to change the forward to reservoir. Em3rald 12:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

It's done. Thanks for the input. Katr67 16:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)