Surface water is water collecting on the ground or in a stream, river, lake, wetland, or ocean; it is related to water collecting as groundwater or atmospheric water.
Surface water is naturally replenished by precipitation and naturally lost through discharge to evaporation and sub-surface seepage into the ground. Although there are other sources of groundwater, such as connate water and magmatic water, precipitation is the major one and groundwater originated in this way is called meteoric water.
Read more about Surface Water: Classification of Surface Water Quality, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words surface and/or water:
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But the beggar gazes on calamity
And thereafter he belongs to it, to bread
Hard found, and water tasting of misery.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)