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Water clarity is one way that humans measure water quality, along with oxygen concentration and the presence or absence of pollutants and algal blooms. [1] Water clarity governs the health of underwater ecosystems because it impacts the amount of light reaching the plants and animals living underwater. For plants, light is needed for ...
Connectivity between streams and lakes relates to the landscape drainage density, lake surface area and lake shape. [15] Other types of aquatic systems which fall within the study of limnology are estuaries. Estuaries are bodies of water classified by the interaction of a river and the ocean or sea. [13]
The key difference between the littoral zone and the limnetic zone is the presence of rooted plant growth. [1] The floor under the limnetic zone cannot sustain plant growth due to a lack of sunlight for photosynthesis. In extremely shallow bodies of water, light may penetrate all the way to floor even in the deepest center parts of the lake.
Finally, there are nekton (animals that can propel themselves, like fish, squids, and crabs), which are the largest and the most obvious animals in the photic zone, but their quantity is the smallest among all the groups. [4] Phytoplankton are microscopic plants living suspended in the water column that have little or no means of motility.
Light rays entering from water into the flat parallel window change their direction minimally within the window material itself. [2] But when these rays exit the window into the air space between the flat window and the eye, the refraction is quite noticeable. The view paths refract (bend) in a manner similar to viewing fish kept in an aquarium.
Light, water depth, and substrate types are the most important factors controlling the distribution of submerged aquatic plants. [10] Macrophytes are sources of food, oxygen, and habitat structure in the benthic zone, but cannot penetrate the depths of the euphotic zone, and hence are not found there.
Ocean optics is the study of how light interacts with water and the materials in water. Although research often focuses on the sea, the field broadly includes rivers, lakes, inland waters, coastal waters, and large ocean basins. How light acts in water is critical to how ecosystems function underwater.
In addition, some lakes become seasonally stratified. Ponds and pools have two regions: the pelagic open water zone, and the benthic zone, which comprises the bottom and shore regions. Since lakes have deep bottom regions not exposed to light, these systems have an additional zone, the profundal. [11]