Surface Water Vocabulary Words

Third Grade

Surface Water

• Water found above ground, on land. It can be streams, rivers, ponds, or lakes or even puddles!

Fresh Water

• Water that is not high in salt content, found in most lakes, rivers, streams and ponds.

Asheville North Carolina

Runoff

• Excess water, not absorbed by the soil, that flows downhill.

Headwater

• The upper part of a stream. Many times, several of these will come together to make a stream or river. Sometimes they form waterfalls.

Headwaters and waterfalls at Nantahala North Carolina . These are in the mountains,

Stream

• A small river or channel of water.

• This is a stream in Western Carolina.

River

This is the Cape Fear River in North Carolina

A large stream of flowing water.

Dam

A barrier that stops the flow of water

• Cheoah Dam in Graham County, North Carolina

Lake

A large body of surface water surrounded by

land.

This is Lake Auman in West End, North

Carolina.

Delta

An area of land formed by sediment at the mouth of a river.

River delta in East Carolina.

Some times deltas are called estuaries.

Watershed• The area of land that catches rain and snowmelt

when it flows as runoff.

A watershed includes all the water from the mountains to the ocean.

Salt Water

• Water that contains salt, found in oceans and sometimes in lakes.

This is a shipwreck off the North CarolinaCoast

Ocean• The whole body of salt water that

covers most of Earth, or one of the sections of this water.

GlacierA large body of accumulated

ice and compacted snow that is found year-round

and slowly moves downhill.

Sometimes glaciers look like a river of ice.

There are no glaciers in North Carolina.

Polar Caps

• Areas of permanent ice that cover the north and south poles of Earth.