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First visit to Northwest Trek puts editor in awe of wildlife park - SunHerald

BHUBANESWAR - IANS.in

Divers find second missing boater in Maine pond - boston.com

Preserving the Pond - HonoluluAdvertiser

Larry In London: Chargers Fans Arrive En Masse… San Diego Invades London - KFMBVTV

Larry In London: Larry Talks To Fans Of British "Football" - KFMBVTV

Larry In London: Is The Chargers Game The Hottest Ticket In Town - KFMBVTV

IN THE SPOTLIGHT - SunHerald

The Dodge Family Farm: Growing and Learning Through the Year - AntonNews

Bond Continues To Dazzle - MediaScrape

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For other uses, see Pond (disambiguation).

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A pond in central Europe

A pond is a body of water smaller than a lake. The difference between a pond and a lake is subjective; they are both formed by ponding water. Ponds are sometimes man-made. Ponds can be made by excavating a hollow in which water may lie, filling an existing depression with groundwater or water diverted from a stream, or by forming a dam to impound the water in a valley.

The techniques may be combined to form a reservoir in flat country by enclosing an area with an embankment. Such a pond, unless very small, is usually called a reservoir. In some cultures, the meaning has been extended to include small bodies of water impounded naturally. Oxford English Dictionary

Scientifically, a pond is any body of water where light is found in the entire pond body of water. A lake is any body of water that has a profundal zone; there is a limit of effective light penetration for organisms.

Nomenclature

Pond in winter

In origin, pond is a variant form of the word pound, meaning a confining enclosure. As straying cattle are enclosed in a pound so water is enclosed in a pond. In earlier times, ponds were man-made and utilitarian; as stew ponds, mill ponds and so on. The significance of this feature seems in some cases, to have been lost when the word was carried abroad with emigrants so that in places like the United States, natural pools are often called ponds. Oxford English Dictionary

An Australian rock pond. Heathcote National Park

Two people reflected in a fish pond

A pond is sometimes characterized as being a small body of water that is shallow enough for sunlight to reach the bottom, permitting the growth of rooted plants at its deepest point. But mere may be thought a better term for this.

Pond usually describes small bodies of water, generally smaller than one would require a boat to cross. Another definition is that a pond is a body of water where even its deepest areas are reached by sunlight or where a human can walk across the entire body of water without being submerged. In some dialects of English, pond normally refers to small artificially created bodies of water.

Though not generally accepted, some regions of the United States define a pond as a body of water with a surface area of less than 10 acres (40,000 m²).

Regional differences include the use of the word pond in New England, and Maine in particular, for relatively large water bodies. For example, Great Pond, Maine, is over 10 square miles (26 km²) in area.This appears to be, in its present form at least, artificially dammed. It is therefore a pond in the original sense of the word.

In areas which were covered by glaciers in the past, some ponds were created when the glaciers retreated. These ponds are known as kettle ponds. Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts is a well known example. Kettle ponds are usually quite deep and clean because they are fed by underground aquifers rather than surface streams.

The term is also used for temporary accumulation of water from surface runoff (ponded water).

There are various regional names for naturally occurring ponds. In Scotland, one of the terms is lochan, which may also apply to a large body of water such as a lake.

The word "pond" is sometimes also used to refer to the Atlantic Ocean in the expression "across the pond" (a deliberate idiomatic understatement).

Ponds\' calm waters are ideal for insects and other water dwelling invertebrates. This includes the pondskater, the water boatman, the diving beetle, the whirligig beetle and the water scorpion.

Characteristics

Typically, a pond has no surface outflow draining off water and ponds are often spring-fed. Hence, because of the closed environment of ponds, such small bodies of water normally develop self contained eco-systems. Ponds in heavily vegetated areas also display the formation of "scum", which is a common term for dead and decaying vegetation condensing on top of the water. A contributor to this is the presence of algae, which multiply quickly in a nutrient-rich eutrophic pond exposed to strong daylight. Decaying flora provide significant amounts of such nutrients.

Uses

In the Indian subcontinent, Hindu temples usually have a pond nearby so that pilgrims can take baths. These ponds are considered sacred. In medieval times in Europe, it was typical for many monasteries and castles (small, partly self-sufficient communities) to have fish ponds. These are still common in Europe and in East Asia (notably Japan), where koi may be kept.

Another use is in agriculture. In agriculture, Treatment ponds combined with irrigation reservoirs are used as a self-purifying irrigation reservoir to allow irrigation at times of drought.