* Lakes are large bodies of water that are surrounded by land and are not connected to an ocean. Lakes are relatively still bodies of water when compared to a river where the water flows. They can contain either salt or fresh water and are larger than ponds. *

* The Dead Sea in Israel is the world's lowest lake at 1,371 feet below sea level. * The highest lake in the world is Ojos del Salado at 20,965 feet high. It is located in a crater in the Andes Mountains on the border between Chile and Argentina. * A subglacial lake is a lake that is permanently covered by ice. The largest of these is Lake Vostak in Antarctica. * Lakes can form in interesting different ways such as in the craters of volcanoes, by sinkholes in the ground, or even artificially by dams made by man. * There are over 187,000 lakes in Finland giving the country the nickname The Land of the Thousand Lakes.

* A river is a flowing, moving stream of water. Usually a river feeds water into an ocean, lake, pond, or even another river. Rivers can vary in size and there is no hard definition or rule on how big a flow of water must be to be categorized as a river. Water from a river can come from rain, melting snow, lakes, ponds, or even glaciers. Rivers flow downhill from their source. They are considered part of the freshwater biome. * *

* There are 76 rivers in the world over 1000 miles long. * The longest river in the world is the Nile River, 4132 miles in length * The second longest river in the world is the Amazon River, it reaches around 6400 miles in length. * The United States alone has around 3.5 million miles of rivers. * The longest river in the USA is the Missouri River, stretching around 2,340 miles in length. * A lot of people think that rivers always flow south, but 4 of the 10 longest rivers in the world flow north. * World Rivers have been a great source of trade and transport throughout human history. * Rivers have many uses which include fishing, bathing, transport, rafting and swimming among others. * Most of the world’s major cities are located near the banks of rivers. * On January , a US Airways plane successfully made an emergency landing in the Hudson River that runs through New York. After being hit by birds, the pilot of flight 1549 managed to land the plane in the river with the loss of no lives.

* Water that collects or flows beneath the Earth's surface, filling the porous spaces in soil, sediment, and rocks. Groundwater originates from rain and from melting snow and ice and is the source of water for aquifers, springs, and wells. * Ground water is water located beneath the surface of the earth.

* Groundwater supplies drinking water for 51% of the total U.S. population and 99% of the rural population. * Groundwater helps grow our food. 64% of groundwater is used for irrigation to grow crops. * Groundwater is an important component in many industrial processes. * Groundwater is a source of recharge for lakes, rivers, and wetlands.

* Glaciers are huge masses of ice. They can only form in places where more snow falls in the winter than melts in the summer. *

A glacier is a large, flowing river of ice that usually moves very slowing. When a chunk of ice breaks off a glacier it is called “calving”. Between 10,000 to 15,000 icebergs are calved each year. When that chunk of ice floats in the water it is called an iceberg. Most glaciers are found in the polar regions of the world. As the glaciers move across the ground they grind against the earth and carves out valleys. Large boulders can be frozen inside a glacier or pushed along by a glacier, and moved many miles before it is dropped. Glaciers cover about six million square miles of the Earth’s surface, but they are melting at an alarming rate. There are animals, such a polar bears, seals and walruses that use icebergs as a place to rest and hunt for food. The Titanic sunk in the Atlantic Ocean because it hit a huge iceberg.

* Approximately 10 percent of the Earth is covered by glaciers; during the last Ice Age, they covered one-third of the Earth’s surface. * Glacier ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet, storing an estimated 75 percent of the world’s supply. * Glaciers are found in 47 countries. * A glacier can range in length from the equivalent of a football field to more than 100 miles. * The Antarctic ice sheet is actually a glacier and has existed for at least 40 million years. If it were to melt in its entirety, sea levels would rise 210 feet worldwide, according to the U.S. Geological Service. * Alaska is estimated to have more than 100,000 glaciers. Most remain unnamed.

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