Lake as microcosm

Rivers drain an area called a watershed that delivers nutrients like nitrogen in the form of solvents derived from runoff of water on the surface of the land to intervening water bodies called lakes.

Any lake is a basin filled with a variable mass of water and very different kinds of living communities, called ecosystems. Depending on the amount of nutrients some aggregations of plants and animals are more productive than other ecosystems in terms of building functional support networks for many living things.

laws of ecology | landscape | rivers | adaptive management | ecosystem services | value of vegetation