751 articles
LISFLOOD
LISFLOOD is an open-source, GIS-based hydrological model, developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre since 1997, that simulates the water balance of large river basins.
List of glaciers
The list of glaciers describes the world's more than 275,000 glaciers and the global inventories, chiefly the WGI, GLIMS, and Randolph Glacier Inventory, that catalog them.
List of lights
A list of lights, or light list, is an official nautical publication tabulating lights, fog signals, and aids to navigation in detail charts cannot show, arranged by geographic region.
List of most polluted rivers
The list of most polluted rivers covers rankings by pollutant, since no official world ranking exists, with Asian rivers like the Yangtze, Ganges, Pasig, and Citarum dominating plastic and sewage metrics.
List of oceanographers
The list of oceanographers covers notable scientists who study the ocean, spanning pioneers like Matthew Fontaine Maury to modern figures like Marie Tharp and Dean Roemmich.
List of river systems by length
A list of river systems by length ranks the world's river systems, with the Nile and Amazon contending for first place and figures varying by measurement method.
Log-Pearson type III distribution
The log-Pearson type III distribution (LP-III or LP3) is a probability distribution used in flood frequency analysis, the standard method in the United States since 1967.
Longitudinal connectivity
Longitudinal connectivity is the upstream–downstream dimension of river connectivity, allowing water, sediment, nutrients, and organisms to move freely along the channel; dams are its leading cause of loss.
Losing stream
Losing stream, also called influent stream: a stream or reach that loses streamflow by infiltration into the ground, recharging the aquifer; in karst it may sink into fractures or a ponor, unlike a sinking stream at a swallet.
Lysimeter
A lysimeter is a device that isolates a column of soil, with or without vegetation, to measure percolation, leaching, and evapotranspiration; weighing types are the reference method for crop water use.
Marginal ice zone
The marginal ice zone (MIZ) is the dynamic interface between open ocean and sea ice, where waves break the cover into small floes and strongly influence atmosphere–ocean heat fluxes.
Mariana Trench
The Mariana Trench is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth, in the western Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines near Guam, whose deepest point, Challenger Deep, reaches about 10,935 meters.
Marine biology
Marine biology is the study of organisms living in the sea, from microbes to whales. Covers its history from Phoenician voyages and the Challenger era to WHOI and Scripps, physiological adaptation to warming, acidification, and deoxygenation, and modern eDNA and deep-learning methods.
Marine Research Aquarium
Marine Research Aquarium: name shared by research aquarium facilities, notably ICAR-CMFRI aquaria at Calicut and Sagarika Vizhinjam in Kerala, the Sea Point aquarium in Cape Town, and the Australian Antarctic Division krill aquarium in Tasmania.
Matric potential
Matric potential, also called soil-water tension, is the part of soil water potential due to capillary and adsorptive forces, becoming more negative as soil dries.
Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) was an English naval officer and hydrographer who led the first circumnavigation of Australia in HMS Investigator in 1801–1803, proved Tasmania an island, and promoted the name Australia.
Matthew Fontaine Maury
Matthew Fontaine Maury, also called Matthew F. Maury, was an American naval officer and oceanographer, known as the Father of Modern Oceanography for his wind and current charts.
Maximum density of water
The maximum density of water occurs near 3.98 °C at standard atmospheric pressure, so water expands as it cools further, letting lakes freeze from the top down.
Mean high water
Mean high water is a tidal datum, the average of all high water heights observed over the 19-year National Tidal Datum Epoch used by NOAA.
Mean higher high water
Mean higher high water (MHHW) is a tidal datum averaging the higher of each day's two high tides over a 19-year National Tidal Datum Epoch, used as the reference for coastal flooding.
Mean low water
Mean low water is a tidal datum, the average of all low water heights observed over a 19-year period, used as a reference for charting and coastal legal boundaries.
Mean lower low water
Mean lower low water (MLLW) is the tidal datum, averaged over 19 years, that serves as the chart datum for depths on U.S. coastal nautical charts.
Mediterranean Outflow Water
Mediterranean Outflow Water is the warm, highly saline water mass formed where dense Mediterranean water exits Gibraltar, mixes in the Gulf of Cádiz, and spreads into the North Atlantic.
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea, also known as the Med, is a semi-enclosed sea between Europe, Africa, and Asia, connected to the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar.
Megatsunami
A megatsunami, also known as an iminami, is an unusually large tsunami generated by giant landslides, volcanic flank collapses, or asteroid impacts instead of ordinary earthquakes, with run-ups exceeding 100 m.
Melt pond
A melt pond is a pool of meltwater that collects on the surface of sea ice, most commonly on Arctic sea ice during summer, where ponds lower albedo and speed melting.
Meromixis
Meromixis is the condition of a lake in which the water column never fully mixes, leaving dense bottom water permanently unmixed; the term was coined in 1935 by limnologist Ingo Findenegg.
Mesoscale eddy
A mesoscale eddy is a rotating body of ocean water, typically 10 to 100 km across, that drifts for weeks to over a year carrying heat and salt.
Meteotsunami
A meteotsunami is a tsunami-like series of ocean waves generated by fast-moving atmospheric pressure disturbances rather than earthquakes or landslides, known regionally as the rissaga in the Balearic Islands.
Microbial carbon pump
The microbial carbon pump (MCP) is an ocean carbon sequestration mechanism, proposed in 2010, in which marine microorganisms transform labile dissolved organic carbon into recalcitrant forms persisting for millennia.