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Limnology
Science of inland aquatic ecosystems / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Limnology (/lɪmˈnɒlədʒi/ lim-NOL-ə-jee; from Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē) 'lake', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') is the study of inland aquatic ecosystems.[1] The study of limnology includes aspects of the biological, chemical, physical, and geological characteristics of fresh and saline, natural and man-made bodies of water. This includes the study of lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers, springs, streams, wetlands, and groundwater.[2] Water systems are often categorized as either running (lotic) or standing (lentic).[3]
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Limnology includes the study of the drainage basin, movement of water through the basin and biogeochemical changes that occur en route. A more recent sub-discipline of limnology, termed landscape limnology, studies, manages, and seeks to conserve these ecosystems using a landscape perspective, by explicitly examining connections between an aquatic ecosystem and its drainage basin. Recently, the need to understand global inland waters as part of the Earth system created a sub-discipline called global limnology.[4] This approach considers processes in inland waters on a global scale, like the role of inland aquatic ecosystems in global biogeochemical cycles.[5][6][7][8][9]
Limnology is closely related to aquatic ecology and hydrobiology, which study aquatic organisms and their interactions with the abiotic (non-living) environment. While limnology has substantial overlap with freshwater-focused disciplines (e.g., freshwater biology), it also includes the study of inland salt lakes.