Fresh Water Ecology
The study of fresh water habitats is called limnology, coming from the Greek word limnos, meaning "pool, lake, or swamp." Fresh water habitats are normally divided into two groups: the study of standing bodies of water such as lakes and ponds (called lentic ecosystems) and the study of rivers, streams, and other moving sources of water (called lotic ecosystems). Another important area that should be included is fresh water wetlands.
The historical roots of limnology go back to F. A. Forel, who studied Lake Geneva, Switzerland, in the late 1800s and E. A. Birge and C. Juday, who studied lakes in Wisconsin in the early 1900s. More recently, the modern "father" of limnology can arguably be attributed to G. Evelyn Hutchinson, who died in 1991 after teaching at Yale University for more than 40 years. Among his prolific writings are four treatises on limnology which offer the most detailed descriptions of lakes that have been published.
Fresh water ecology is an intriguing field because of the great diversity of aquatic habitats. For example, lakes can be formed in different ways: volcanic origin such as Crater Lake, Oregon; tectonic (earth movement) origin like Lake Tahoe in California/Nevada and Lake Baikal in Siberia; glacially-derived lakes like the Great Lakes or smaller kettle hole or cirque lakes; oxbow lakes which form as rivers change their meandering paths; and human-created reservoirs.
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