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Terrain

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Terrain (from Latin : terra 'earth'), alternatively relief or topographical relief , is the dimension and shape of a given surface of land . In physical geography , terrain is the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation , slope , and orientation of terrain features. Terrain affects surface water flow and distribution. Over a large area, it can affect weather and climate patterns. Bathymetry is the study of underwater relief, while hypsometry studies terrain relative to sea level .

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115-420: The understanding of terrain is critical for many reasons: Relief (or local relief ) refers specifically to the quantitative measurement of vertical elevation change in a landscape . It is the difference between maximum and minimum elevations within a given area, usually of limited extent. A relief can be described qualitatively, such as a " low relief " or " high relief " plain or upland . The relief of

230-493: A kettle hole, vernal pool , prairie pothole , or simply natural undulations in undrained land) filled by runoff, groundwater, or precipitation, or all three of these. They can be further divided into four zones: vegetation zone, open water, bottom mud and surface film. The size and depth of ponds often varies greatly with the time of year; many ponds are produced by spring flooding from rivers. Ponds are usually freshwater but may be brackish in nature. Saltwater pools, with

345-417: A landscape park or wilderness . The Earth has a vast range of landscapes including the icy landscapes of polar regions , mountainous landscapes, vast arid desert landscapes, islands , and coastal landscapes, densely forested or wooded landscapes including past boreal forests and tropical rainforests and agricultural landscapes of temperate and tropical regions. The activity of modifying

460-624: A classic and much-imitated status within the Chinese tradition. Both the Roman and Chinese traditions typically show grand panoramas of imaginary landscapes, generally backed with a range of spectacular mountains – in China often with waterfalls and in Rome often including sea, lakes or rivers. These were frequently used to bridge the gap between a foreground scene with figures and a distant panoramic vista,

575-594: A combination of these sources. They were designed to retain the water, while at the same time letting some water seep away to feed the local aquifers . A defining feature of a pond is the presence of standing water which provides habitat for a biological community commonly referred to as pond life . Because of this, many ponds and lakes contain large numbers of endemic species that have gone through adaptive radiation to become specialized to their preferred habitat. Familiar examples might include water lilies and other aquatic plants, frogs , turtles , and fish. Often,

690-649: A cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result. A cultural landscape, as defined by the World Heritage Committee , is the "cultural properties [that] represent the combined works of nature and of man." The World Heritage Committee identifies three categories of cultural landscape, ranging from (i) those landscapes most deliberately 'shaped' by people, through (ii) full range of 'combined' works, to (iii) those least evidently 'shaped' by people (yet highly valued). The three categories extracted from

805-536: A deep mixing layer occurs. Autumn turnover results in isothermal lakes with high levels of dissolved oxygen as the water reaches an average colder temperature. Finally, winter stratification occurs inversely to summer stratification as surface ice begins to form yet again. This ice cover remains until solar radiation and convection return in the spring. Due to this constant change in vertical zonation, seasonal stratification causes habitats to grow and shrink accordingly. Certain species are bound to these distinct layers of

920-442: A direct connection to the sea to maintain full salinity, may sometimes be called 'ponds' but these are normally regarded as part of the marine environment. They do not support fresh or brackish water-based organisms, and are rather tidal pools or lagoons . Ponds are typically shallow water bodies with varying abundances of aquatic plants and animals. Depth, seasonal water level variations, nutrient fluxes, amount of light reaching

1035-488: A few miles above Tintern Abbey is an obvious example. More recently, Matthew Arnold 's " The Scholar Gipsy " (1853) praises the Oxfordshire countryside, and W. H. Auden 's " In Praise of Limestone " (1948) uses a limestone landscape as an allegory. Subgenres of topographical poetry include the country house poem , written in 17th-century England to compliment a wealthy patron, and the prospect poem , describing

1150-592: A kilometre-wide scale; instead, he defines 'landscape'—regardless of scale—as "the template on which spatial patterns influence ecological processes". Some define 'landscape' as an area containing two or more ecosystems in close proximity. The discipline of landscape science has been described as "bring[ing] landscape ecology and urban ecology together with other disciplines and cross-disciplinary fields to identify patterns and understand social-ecological processes influencing landscape change". A 2000 paper entitled "Geography and landscape science" states that "The whole of

1265-490: A landscape can change with the size of the area over which it is measured, making the definition of the scale over which it is measured very important. Because it is related to the slope of surfaces within the area of interest and to the gradient of any streams present, the relief of a landscape is a useful metric in the study of the Earth's surface. Relief energy, which may be defined inter alia as "the maximum height range in

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1380-529: A landscape is a heterogeneous land area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems that is repeated in similar form throughout, whereby they list woods, meadows, marshes and villages as examples of a landscape's ecosystems, and state that a landscape is an area at least a few kilometres wide. John A. Wiens opposes the traditional view expounded by Carl Troll , Isaak S. Zonneveld, Zev Naveh, Richard T. T. Forman/Michel Godron and others that landscapes are arenas in which humans interact with their environments on

1495-626: A landscape or place. John Denham 's 1642 poem "Cooper's Hill" established the genre, which peaked in popularity in 18th-century England. Examples of topographical verse date, however, to the Late Classical period, and can be found throughout the Medieval era and during the Renaissance . Though the earliest examples come mostly from continental Europe, the topographical poetry in the tradition originating with Denham concerns itself with

1610-497: A landscape or scenery, topographical poetry often, at least implicitly, addresses a political issue or the meaning of nationality in some way. The description of the landscape therefore becomes a poetic vehicle for a political message. For example, in John Denham's "Cooper's Hill", the speaker discusses the merits of the recently executed Charles I . The Vision on Mount Snowdon .................................and on

1725-458: A landscape that brings together multiple stakeholders, who collaborate to integrate policy and practice for their different land use objectives, with the purpose of achieving sustainable landscapes. It recognises that, for example, one river basin can supply water for towns and agriculture, timber and food crops for smallholders and industry, and habitat for biodiversity; the way in which each one of these sectors pursues its goals can have impacts on

1840-405: A landscape was Joseph Addison in 1712. The term landscape architecture was invented by Gilbert Laing Meason in 1828 and was first used as a professional title by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1863. During the latter 19th century, the term landscape architect became used by professional people who designed landscapes. Frederick Law Olmsted used the term 'landscape architecture' as a profession for

1955-440: A major higher tropic level consumer, as these ponds frequently dry up. The absence of fish is a very important characteristic of these ponds since it prevents long chained biotic interactions from establishing. Ponds without these competitive predation pressures provides breeding locations and safe havens for endangered or migrating species. Hence, introducing fish to a pond can have seriously detrimental consequences. In some parts of

2070-984: A major predator upon amphibian larvae, ponds that dry up each year, thereby killing resident fish, provide important refugia for amphibian breeding. Ponds that dry up completely each year are often known as vernal pools . Some ponds are produced by animal activity, including alligator holes and beaver ponds , and these add important diversity to landscapes. Ponds are frequently man made or expanded beyond their original depths and bounds by anthropogenic causes. Apart from their role as highly biodiverse, fundamentally natural, freshwater ecosystems ponds have had, and still have, many uses, including providing water for agriculture , livestock and communities, aiding in habitat restoration, serving as breeding grounds for local and migrating species, decorative components of landscape architecture , flood control basins, general urbanization, interception basins for pollutants and sources and sinks of greenhouse gases . The technical distinction between

2185-422: A mental construct but as an objectively given 'organic entity', a harmonic individuum of space . Ernst Neef defines landscapes as sections within the uninterrupted earth-wide interconnection of geofactors which are defined as such on the basis of their uniformity in terms of a specific land use, and are thus defined in an anthropocentric and relativistic way. According to Richard Forman and Michael Godron ,

2300-575: A persistent problem for landscape artists. A major contrast between landscape painting in the West and East Asia has been that while in the West until the 19th century it occupied a low position in the accepted hierarchy of genres , in East Asia the classic Chinese mountain-water ink painting was traditionally the most prestigious form of visual art. However, in the West, history painting came to require an extensive landscape background where appropriate, so

2415-663: A pond and a lake has not been universally standardized. Limnologists and freshwater biologists have proposed formal definitions for pond , in part to include 'bodies of water where light penetrates to the bottom of the waterbody', 'bodies of water shallow enough for rooted water plants to grow throughout', and 'bodies of water which lack wave action on the shoreline'. Each of these definitions are difficult to measure or verify in practice and are of limited practical use, and are mostly not now used. Accordingly, some organizations and researchers have settled on technical definitions of pond and lake that rely on size alone. Some regions of

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2530-514: A reaction against urbanism and industrialisation and a new emphasis on the beauty and value of nature and landscape. However, it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment , as well a reaction against the scientific rationalisation of nature. The poet William Wordsworth was a major contributor to the literature of landscape, as was his contemporary poet and novelist Walter Scott . Scott's influence

2645-436: A regular grid", is essentially an indication of the ruggedness or relative height of the terrain. Geomorphology is in large part the study of the formation of terrain or topography. Terrain is formed by concurrent processes operating on the underlying geological structures over geological time : Tectonic processes such as orogenies and uplifts cause land to be elevated, whereas erosional and weathering processes wear

2760-589: A regular yearly process in the same matter as larger lakes if they are deep enough and/or protected from the wind. Abiotic factors such as UV radiation, general temperature, wind speed, water density, and even size, all have important roles to play when it comes to the seasonal effects on lakes and ponds. Spring overturn, summer stratification, autumn turnover, and an inverse winter stratification, ponds adjust their stratification or their vertical zonation of temperature due to these influences. These environmental factors affect pond circulation and temperature gradients within

2875-449: A result, breakdown and release of nitrogen gases from these organic materials such as N 2 O does not occur and thus, not added to our atmosphere. This process is also used with regular denitrification in anoxic layer of ponds. However, not all ponds have the ability to become sinks for greenhouse gasses . Most ponds experience eutrophication where faced with excessive nutrient input from fertilizers and runoff. This over-nitrifies

2990-468: A series of carefully composed scenes, unrolling like a scroll of landscape paintings. The English landscape garden , also called English landscape park or simply the 'English garden', is a style of parkland garden intended to look as though it might be a natural landscape, although it may be very extensively re-arranged. It emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing

3105-585: A strong sense of place, but the emphasis is on individual plant forms and human and animal figures rather than the overall landscape setting. For a coherent depiction of a whole landscape, some rough system of perspective, or scaling for distance, is needed, and this seems from literary evidence to have first been developed in Ancient Greece in the Hellenistic period, although no large-scale examples survive. More ancient Roman landscapes survive, from

3220-569: A terrain or curvatures at each location. These measures can also be used to derive hydrological parameters that reflect flow/erosion processes. Climatic parameters are based on the modelling of solar radiation or air flow. Land surface objects, or landforms , are definite physical objects (lines, points, areas) that differ from the surrounding objects. The most typical examples airlines of watersheds , stream patterns, ridges , break-lines , pools or borders of specific landforms. A digital elevation model (DEM) or digital surface model (DSM)

3335-590: Is a 3D computer graphics representation of elevation data to represent terrain or overlaying objects, commonly of a planet , moon , or asteroid . A "global DEM" refers to a discrete global grid . DEMs are used often in geographic information systems (GIS), and are the most common basis for digitally produced relief maps . A digital terrain model (DTM) represents specifically the ground surface while DEM and DSM may represent tree top canopy or building roofs. [REDACTED] The dictionary definition of terrain at Wiktionary Landscape A landscape

3450-482: Is causing a loss of cultural identity, as many modern buildings share similar palettes, diluting local characteristics. Researchers have proposed more unified cityscape approaches to address these color landscape issues and help cities preserve their distinctive identities and create vibrant, emotionally engaging urban environments. The word landscape ( landscipe or landscaef ) arrived in England —and therefore into

3565-622: Is found in Australian aboriginal myths (also known as Dreamtime or Dreaming stories, songlines , or Aboriginal oral literature ), the stories traditionally performed by Aboriginal peoples within each of the language groups across Australia. All such myths variously tell significant truths within each Aboriginal group's local landscape . They effectively layer the whole of the Australian continent's topography with cultural nuance and deeper meaning, and empower selected audiences with

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3680-589: Is no universally recognized standard for the maximum size of a pond. The international Ramsar wetland convention sets the upper limit for pond size as 8  hectares (80,000  m ; 20  acres ). Researchers for the British charity Pond Conservation (now called Freshwater Habitats Trust) have defined a pond to be 'a man-made or natural waterbody that is between 1 m (0.00010 hectares; 0.00025 acres) and 20,000 m (2.0 hectares; 4.9 acres) in area, which holds water for four months of

3795-466: Is reached. As temperatures increase through the summer, thermal stratification takes place. Summer stratification allows for the epilimnion to be mixed by winds, keeping a consistent warm temperature throughout this zone. Here, photosynthesis and primary production flourishes. However, those species that need cooler water with higher dissolved oxygen concentrations will favor the lower metalimnion or hypolimnion. Air temperature drops as fall approaches and

3910-474: Is the Prairie Pothole Region of North America. When glaciers retreat, they may leave behind uneven ground due to bedrock elastic rebound and sediment outwash plains. These areas may develop depressions that can fill up with excess precipitation or seeping ground water, forming a small pond. Kettle lakes and ponds are formed when ice breaks off from a larger glacier, is eventually buried by

4025-425: Is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizational levels of research and policy. Landscape is a central concept in landscape ecology. It is, however, defined in quite different ways. For example: Carl Troll conceives of landscape not as

4140-618: Is the visible features of an area of land , its landforms , and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal. A landscape includes the physical elements of geophysically defined landforms such as mountains , hills , water bodies such as rivers , lakes , ponds and the sea , living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation , human elements including different forms of land use , buildings, and structures , and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and

4255-543: The Amazon . Some ponds are solely created by animals species such as beavers , bison , alligators and other crocodilians through damning and nest excavation respectively. In landscapes with organic soils , local fires can create depressions during periods of drought. These have the tendency to fill up with small amounts of precipitation until normal water levels return, turning these isolated ponds into open water. Manmade ponds are those created by human intervention for

4370-622: The Common Carp that eat native water plants or Northern Snakeheads that attack breeding amphibians, aquatic snails that carry infectious parasites that kill other species, and even rapid spreading aquatic plants like Hydrilla and Duckweed that can restrict water flow and cause overbank flooding. Ponds, depending on their orientation and size, can spread their wetland habitats into the local riparian zones or watershed boundaries. Gentle slopes of land into ponds provides an expanse of habitat for wetland plants and wet meadows to expand beyond

4485-535: The English language —after the fifth century, following the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons ; these terms referred to a system of human-made spaces on the land. The term landscape emerged around the turn of the sixteenth century to denote a painting whose primary subject matter was natural scenery. Land (a word from Germanic origin) may be taken in its sense of something to which people belong (as in England being

4600-562: The Urlandschaft (transl. original landscape) or landscape that existed before major human induced changes and the Kulturlandschaft (transl. 'cultural landscape') a landscape created by human culture. The major task of geography was to trace the changes in these two landscapes. It was Carl O. Sauer , a human geographer , who was probably the most influential in promoting and developing the idea of cultural landscapes. Sauer

4715-423: The cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to local and national identity . The character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and a sense of place that differentiates one region from other regions. It is the dynamic backdrop to people's lives. Landscape can be as varied as farmland,

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4830-741: The fine arts , architecture , industrial design , geology and the earth sciences , environmental psychology , geography , and ecology . The activities of a landscape architect can range from the creation of public parks and parkways to site planning for campuses and corporate office parks, from the design of residential estates to the design of civil infrastructure and the management of large wilderness areas or reclamation of degraded landscapes such as mines or landfills . Landscape architects work on all types of structures and external space – large or small, urban , suburban and rural , and with "hard" (built) and "soft" (planted) materials, while paying attention to ecological sustainability . For

4945-555: The flux of these dissolved compounds. However, manmade farm ponds are becoming significant sinks for gas mitigation and the fight against climate change . These agriculture runoff ponds receive high pH level water from surrounding soils. Highly acidic drainage ponds act as catalysis for excess CO 2 (carbon dioxide) to be converted into forms of carbon that can easily be stored in sediments. When these new drainage ponds are constructed, concentrations of bacteria that normally break down dead organic matter, such as algae, are low. As

5060-627: The 16th through the 20th centuries—from Edmund Spenser to Sylvia Plath —correspondent to each type, from "Walks and Surveys", to "Mountains, Hills, and the View from Above", to "Violation of Nature and the Landscape", to "Spirits and Ghosts." Common aesthetic registers of which topographical poetry makes use include pastoral imagery, the sublime , and the picturesque , which include images of rivers, ruins, moonlight, birdsong, and clouds, peasants, mountains, caves, and waterscapes. Though describing

5175-464: The 1st century BCE onwards, especially frescos of landscapes decorating rooms that have been preserved at archaeological sites of Pompeii , Herculaneum and elsewhere, and mosaics . The Chinese ink painting tradition of shan shui ("mountain-water"), or "pure" landscape, in which the only sign of human life is usually a sage, or a glimpse of his hut, uses sophisticated landscape backgrounds to figure subjects, and landscape art of this period retains

5290-467: The Anglo-Chinese garden, and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778). The English garden usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. The work of Lancelot "Capability" Brown and Humphry Repton

5405-550: The Committee's Operational Guidelines, are as follows: The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the Imperial Family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate gardens created by scholars, poets, former government officials, soldiers and merchants, made for reflection and escape from

5520-557: The Earth's surface and the general being that which can be seen by an observer. An example of this second usage can be found as early as 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer : There are several words that are frequently associated with the word landscape: Geomorphology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical or chemical processes operating at or near Earth's surface. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look

5635-482: The English landscape found in the works of John Constable , J. M. W. Turner and Samuel Palmer . However all these had difficulty establishing themselves in the contemporary art market, which still preferred history paintings and portraits. In Europe, as John Ruskin said, and Sir Kenneth Clark confirmed, landscape painting was the "chief artistic creation of the nineteenth century", and "the dominant art", with

5750-571: The Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) was also an influential text, as was Longinus ' On the Sublime (early A.D., Greece), which was translated into English from the French in 1739. From the 18th century, a taste for the sublime in the natural landscape emerged alongside the idea of the sublime in language; that is elevated rhetoric or speech. A topographical poem that influenced

5865-569: The Romantics, was James Thomson 's The Seasons (1726–30). The changing landscape, brought about by the industrial and agricultural revolutions , with the expansion of the city and depopulation of the countryside, was another influences on the growth of the Romantic movement in Britain. The poor condition of workers, the new class conflicts, and the pollution of the environment all led to

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5980-510: The United States define a pond as a body of water with a surface area of less than 10 acres (4.0 ha). Minnesota , known as the "land of 10,000 lakes", is commonly said to distinguish lakes from ponds, bogs and other water features by this definition, but also says that a lake is distinguished primarily by wave action reaching the shore. Even among organizations and researchers who distinguish lakes from ponds by size alone, there

6095-460: The accumulated wisdom and knowledge of Australian Aboriginal ancestors back to time immemorial . In the West pastoral poetry represent the earliest form of landscape literature, though this literary genre presents an idealized landscape peopled by shepherds and shepherdesses, and creates "an image of a peaceful uncorrupted existence; a kind of prelapsarian world". The pastoral has its origins in

6210-556: The best conditions for wildlife, but they help protect water quality from sources in the surrounding landscapes. It is also beneficial to allow water levels to fall each year during drier periods in order to re-establish these gentile shorelines. In landscapes where ponds are artificially constructed, they are done so to provide wildlife viewing and conservation opportunities, to treat wastewater, for sequestration and pollution containment, or for simply aesthetic purposes. For natural pond conservation and development, one way to stimulate this

6325-518: The case of Crystal Lake shows, marketing purposes can sometimes be the driving factor behind the categorization. In practice, a body of water is called a pond or a lake on an individual basis, as conventions change from place to place and over time. In origin, a pond is a variant form of the word pound, meaning a confining enclosure. In earlier times, ponds were artificial and utilitarian, as stew ponds , mill ponds and so on. The significance of this feature seems, in some cases, to have been lost when

6440-455: The classics, and many of the various types of topographical verse, such as river, ruin, or hilltop poems were established by the early 17th century. Alexander Pope 's "Windsor Forest" (1713) and John Dyer 's " Grongar Hill ' (1762) are two other familiar examples. George Crabbe , the Suffolk regional poet, also wrote topographical poems, as did William Wordsworth , of which Lines written

6555-620: The development of extremely subtle realist techniques for depicting light and weather. The popularity of landscapes in the Netherlands was in part a reflection of the virtual disappearance of religious painting in a Calvinist society, and the decline of religious painting in the 18th and 19th centuries all over Europe combined with Romanticism to give landscapes a much greater and more prestigious place in 19th-century art than they had assumed before. In England, landscapes had initially been mostly backgrounds to portraits, typically suggesting

6670-620: The disciplines involved in landscape research will be referred to as landscape science, although this term was used first in 1885 by the geographers Oppel and Troll". A 2013 guest editorial defines landscape science as "research that seeks to understand the relationship between people and their environment, with a focus on land use change and data pertaining to land resources at the landscape scale". The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1979 defines landscape science as "the branch of physical geography that deals with natural territorial complexes (or geographic complexes, geosystems) as structural parts of

6785-434: The earth's geographic mantle" and states that "The basis of landscape science is the theory that the geographic landscape is the primary element in the physicogeo-graphical differentiation of the earth. Landscape science deals with the origin, structure, and dynamics of landscapes, the laws of the development and arrangement of landscapes, and the transformation of landscapes by the economic activity of man.", and asserts that it

6900-504: The entire margin of the pond is fringed by wetland , and these wetlands support the aquatic food web , provide shelter for wildlife, and stabilize the shore of the pond. This margin is also known as the littoral zone and contains much of the photosynthetic algae and plants of this ecosystem called macrophytes . Other photosynthetic organisms such as phytoplankton (suspended algae) and periphytons (organisms including cyanobacteria , detritus , and other microbes ) thrive here and stand as

7015-414: The field. The surface of Earth is modified by a combination of surface processes that sculpt landscapes, and geologic processes that cause tectonic uplift and subsidence , and shape the coastal geography . Surface processes comprise the action of water , wind , ice , fire , and living things on the surface of the Earth, along with chemical reactions that form soils and alter material properties,

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7130-484: The fields of environmental science, chemistry, aquatic biology, and limnology. Some ponds are the life blood of many small villages in arid countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa where bathing, sanitation, fishing, socialization, and rituals are held. In the Indian subcontinent , Hindu temple monks care for sacred ponds used for religious practices and bathing pilgrims alike. In Europe during medieval times, it

7245-700: The first great poet associated with the Fields and Gardens poetry genre. Many landscape photographs show little or no human activity and are created in the pursuit of a pure, unsullied depiction of nature devoid of human influence, instead featuring subjects such as strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light. As with most forms of art, the definition of a landscape photograph is broad, and may include urban settings, industrial areas, and nature photography . Notable landscape photographers include Ansel Adams , Galen Rowell , Edward Weston , Ben Heine , Mark Gray and Fred Judge . The earliest forms of art around

7360-495: The first time when designing Central Park , New York City , US. Here the combination of traditional landscape gardening and the emerging field of city planning gave landscape architecture its unique focus. This use of the term landscape architect became established after Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and others founded the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1899. Possibly the earliest landscape literature

7475-593: The focus of the Sustainable Development Goals . Integrated landscape management is increasingly taken up at the national, local and international level, for example the UN Environment Programme states that "UNEP champions the landscape approach de facto as it embodies the main elements of integrated ecosystem management ". Landscape archaeology or landscape history is the study of the way in which humanity has changed

7590-551: The formation of deep sedimentary basins where the surface of Earth drops and is filled with material eroded from other parts of the landscape. The Earth surface and its topography therefore are an intersection of climatic, hydrologic , and biologic action with geologic processes. Desert , Plain , Taiga , Tundra , Wetland , Mountain , Mountain range , Cliff , Coast , Littoral zone , Glacier , Polar regions of Earth , Shrubland , Forest , Rainforest , Woodland , Jungle , Moors , Steppe , Valley . Landscape ecology

7705-743: The genre of landscape painting . When people deliberately improve the aesthetic appearance of a piece of land—by changing contours and vegetation, etc.—it is said to have been landscaped , though the result may not constitute a landscape according to some definitions. Color landscapes blend artificial elements like buildings, roads, and pavements with natural features such as mountains, forests, plants, sky, and rivers. These compositions of distant and near views can significantly impact people's emotions. As urbanization rapidly advances, urban color landscape design has become essential for cities to differentiate and symbolize their unique character and atmosphere. However, this transformation has created challenges. First,

7820-556: The ground which collects and retains a sufficient amount of water can be considered a pond, and such, can be formed by a variety of geological , ecological , and human terraforming events. Natural ponds are those caused by environmental occurrences. These can vary from glacial, volcanic, fluvial, or even tectonic events. Since the Pleistocene epoch, glacial processes have created most of the Northern hemispheric ponds; an example

7935-424: The land away by smoothing and reducing topographic features. The relationship of erosion and tectonics rarely (if ever) reaches equilibrium. These processes are also codependent, however the full range of their interactions is still a topic of debate. Land surface parameters are quantitative measures of various morphometric properties of a surface. The most common examples are used to derive slope or aspect of

8050-454: The land of the English). The suffix -scape is equivalent to the more common English suffix -ship. The roots of -ship are etymologically akin to Old English sceppan or scyppan , meaning to shape . The suffix -schaft is related to the verb schaffen , so that -ship and shape are also etymologically linked. The modern form of the word, with its connotations of scenery, appeared in

8165-408: The late sixteenth century when the term landschap was introduced by Dutch painters who used it to refer to paintings of inland natural or rural scenery. The word landscape , first recorded in 1598, was borrowed from a Dutch painters' term. The popular conception of the landscape that is reflected in dictionaries conveys both a particular and a general meaning, the particular referring to an area of

8280-539: The limitation of the pond. However, the construction of retaining walls, lawns, and other urbanized developments can severely degrade the range of pond habitats and the longevity of the pond itself. Roads and highways act in the same manor, but they also interfere with amphibians and turtles that migrate to and from ponds as part of their annual breeding cycle and should be kept as far away from established ponds as possible. Because of these factors, gently sloping shorelines with broad expanses of wetland plants not only provide

8395-516: The littoral zone and the limnetic zone. The open water limnetic zone may allow algae to grow as sunlight still penetrates here. These algae may support yet another food web that includes aquatic insects and other small fish species. A pond, therefore, may have combinations of three different food webs, one based on larger plants, one based upon decayed plants, and one based upon algae and their specific upper trophic level consumers and predators. Hence, ponds often have many different animal species using

8510-561: The more formal, symmetrical jardin à la française of the 17th century as the principal style for large parks and gardens in Europe. The English garden (and later French landscape garden ) presented an idealized view of nature. It drew inspiration from paintings of landscapes by Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin , and from the classic Chinese gardens of the East, which had recently been described by European travellers and were realized in

8625-423: The others. The intention is to minimise conflict between these different land use objectives and ecosystem services . This approach draws on landscape ecology, as well as many related fields that also seek to integrate different land uses and users, such as watershed management . Proponents of integrated landscape management argue that it is well-suited to address complex global challenges, such as those that are

8740-429: The outside world. They create an idealized miniature landscape, which is meant to express the harmony that should exist between man and nature. A typical Chinese garden is enclosed by walls and includes one or more ponds, scholar's rocks , trees and flowers, and an assortment of halls and pavilions within the garden, connected by winding paths and zig-zag galleries. By moving from structure to structure, visitors can view

8855-464: The parks or estates of a landowner, though mostly painted in London by an artist who had never visited the site. the English tradition was founded by Anthony van Dyck and other, mostly Flemish , artists working in England. By the beginning of the 19th century the English artists with the highest modern reputations were mostly dedicated landscapists, showing the wide range of Romantic interpretations of

8970-463: The people in their paintings to figures subsumed within broader, regionally specific landscapes. The geographer Otto Schlüter is credited with having first formally used "cultural landscape" as an academic term in the early 20th century. In 1908, Schlüter argued that by defining geography as a Landschaftskunde (landscape science) this would give geography a logical subject matter shared by no other discipline. He defined two forms of landscape:

9085-479: The period before 1800, the history of landscape gardening (later called landscape architecture) is largely that of master planning and garden design for manor houses , palaces and royal properties, religious complexes, and centers of government. An example is the extensive work by André Le Nôtre at Vaux-le-Vicomte and at the Palace of Versailles for King Louis XIV of France . The first person to write of making

9200-515: The physical appearance of the environment - both present and past. Landscape generally refers to both natural environments and environments constructed by human beings. Natural landscapes are considered to be environments that have not been altered by humans in any shape or form. Cultural landscapes , on the other hand, are environments that have been altered in some manner by people (including temporary structures and places, such as campsites, that are created by human beings). Among archaeologists,

9315-514: The pond water and results in mass algae blooms and local fish kills . Some farm ponds are not used for runoff control but rather for livestock like cattle or buffalo as watering and bathing holes. As mentioned in the use section, ponds are important hotspots for biodiversity. Sometimes this becomes an issue with invasive or introduced species that disrupt pond ecosystem dynamics such as food-web structure, niche partitioning, and guild assignments. This varies from introduced fish species such as

9430-514: The ponds, the shape, the presence of visiting large mammals, the composition of any fish communities and salinity can all affect the types of plant and animal communities present. Food webs are based both on free-floating algae and upon aquatic plants. There is usually a diverse array of aquatic life, with a few examples including algae, snails , fish, beetles , water bugs , frogs , turtles , otters , and muskrats . Top predators may include large fish, herons , or alligators . Since fish are

9545-409: The primary producers of pond food webs. Some grazing animals like geese and muskrats consume the wetland plants directly as a source of food. In many other cases, pond plants will decay in the water. Many invertebrates and herbivorous zooplankton then feed on the decaying plants, and these lower trophic level organisms provide food for wetland species including fish, dragonflies , and herons both in

9660-425: The result that in the following period people were "apt to assume that the appreciation of natural beauty and the painting of landscape is a normal and enduring part of our spiritual activity" Pond A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression , either naturally or artificially . A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing

9775-1001: The sake of the local environment, industrial settings, or for recreational/ornamental use. Many ecosystems are linked by water and ponds have been found to hold a greater biodiversity of species than larger freshwater lakes or river systems. As such, ponds are habitats for many varieties of organisms including plants, amphibians , fish, reptiles , waterfowl , insects , and even some mammals . Ponds are used for breeding grounds for these species but also as shelter and even drinking/feeding locations for other wildlife. Aquaculture practices lean heavily on artificial ponds in order to grow and care for many different type of fish either for human consumption, research, species conservation or recreational sport. In agriculture practices, treatment ponds can be created to reduce nutrient runoff from reaching local streams or groundwater storages. Pollutants that enter ponds can often be mitigated by natural sedimentation and other biological and chemical activities within

9890-630: The scroll itself. Many painters also wrote poetry, especially in the scholar-official or literati tradition. Landscape images were present in the early Shijing and the Chuci , but in later poetry the emphasis changed, as in painting to the Shan shui ( Chinese : 山水 lit. "mountain-water") style featuring wild mountains, rivers and lakes, rather than landscape as a setting for a human presence. Shanshui poetry traditional Chinese : 山水詩 ; simplified Chinese : 山水诗 developed in China during

10005-615: The shore I found myself of a huge sea of mist, Which meek and silent rested at my feet. A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved All over this still ocean, and beyond, Far, far beyond, the vapours shot themselves In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes, Into the sea, the real sea, that seemed To dwindle and give up its majesty, Usurped upon as far as sight could reach. from The Prelude (1805), Book 13, lines 41-51. by William Wordsworth One important aspect of British Romanticism  – evident in painting and literature as well as in politics and philosophy –

10120-407: The stability and rate of change of topography under the force of gravity , and other factors, such as (in the very recent past) human alteration of the landscape. Many of these factors are strongly mediated by climate . Geologic processes include the uplift of mountain ranges , the growth of volcanoes , isostatic changes in land surface elevation (sometimes in response to surface processes), and

10235-799: The surrounding glacial till, and over time melts. Orogenies and other tectonic uplifting events have created some of the oldest lakes and ponds on the globe. These indentions have the tendency to quickly fill with groundwater if they occur below the local water table. Other tectonic rifts or depressions can fill with precipitation, local mountain runoff, or be fed by mountain streams. Volcanic activity can also lead to lake and pond formation through collapsed lava tubes or volcanic cones. Natural floodplains along rivers, as well as landscapes that contain many depressions, may experience spring/rainy season flooding and snow melt. Temporary or vernal ponds are created this way and are important for breeding fish, insects, and amphibians, particularly in large river systems like

10350-550: The term landscape can refer to the meanings and alterations people mark onto their surroundings. As such, landscape archaeology is often employed to study the human use of land over extensive periods of time. Landscape archaeology can be summed up by Nicole Branton's statement: The concept of cultural landscapes can be found in the European tradition of landscape painting . From the 16th century onwards, many European artists painted landscapes in favor of people, diminishing

10465-482: The terms is lochan , which may also apply to a large body of water such as a lake. In the South Western parts of North American, lakes or ponds that are temporary and often dried up for most parts of the year are called playas . These playas are simply shallow depressions in dry areas that may only fill with water on certain occasion like excess local drainage, groundwater seeping, or rain. Any depression in

10580-404: The theory did not entirely work against the development of landscape painting – for several centuries landscapes were regularly promoted to the status of history painting by the addition of small figures to make a narrative scene, typically religious or mythological. Dutch Golden Age painting of the 17th century saw the dramatic growth of landscape painting, in which many artists specialized, and

10695-496: The third and fourth centuries AD and left most of the varied landscapes of China largely unrepresented. Shan shui painting and poetry shows imaginary landscapes, though with features typical of some parts of South China; they remain popular to the present day. Fields and Gardens poetry ( simplified Chinese : 田园诗 ; traditional Chinese : 田園詩 ; pinyin : tiányuán shī ; Wade–Giles : t'ien-yuan-shih ; lit. 'fields and gardens poetry'), in poetry )

10810-409: The traditional color landscapes in some cities have been heavily influenced by natural geography, climate, local materials, ethnic culture, religion, and socioeconomic factors. Second, the growing problem of "color pollution" - through bright, solid-colored buildings, billboards, and lighting clusters - adversely affects people physically and psychologically. Third, homogenization of colors between cities

10925-505: The two, although defining a pond to be less than 5 hectares (12 acres) in area, less than 5 metres (16 ft) in depth and with less than 30% with emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing the ecology of ponds from those of lakes and wetlands . Ponds can be created by a wide variety of natural processes (e.g. on floodplains as cutoff river channels, by glacial processes, by peatland formation, in coastal dune systems, by beavers ), or they can simply be isolated depressions (such as

11040-410: The view from a distance or a temporal view into the future, with the sense of opportunity or expectation. When understood broadly as landscape poetry and when assessed from its establishment to the present, topographical poetry can take on many formal situations and types of places. Kenneth Baker, in his "Introduction to The Faber Book of Landscape Poetry , identifies 37 varieties and compiles poems from

11155-404: The visible features of an area of land is referred to as landscaping . There are several definitions of what constitutes a landscape, depending on context. In common usage however, a landscape refers either to all the visible features of an area of land (usually rural), often considered in terms of aesthetic appeal, or to a pictorial representation of an area of countryside, specifically within

11270-460: The water column where they can thrive and survive with the best efficiency possible. For more information regarding seasonal thermal stratification of ponds and lakes, please look at " Lake Stratification ". Ponds provide not only environmental values, but practical benefits to society. One increasingly crucial benefit that ponds provide is their ability to act as greenhouse gas sinks. Most natural lakes and ponds are greenhouse gas sources and aid in

11385-476: The water itself producing distant layers; the epilimnion , metalimnion , and hypolimnion . Each zone has varied traits that sustain or harm specific organisms and biotic interactions below the surface depending on the season. Winter surface ice begins to melt in the Spring. This allows the water column to begin mixing thanks to solar convection and wind velocity. As the pond mixes, an overall constant temperature

11500-487: The water. As such, waste stabilization ponds are becoming popular low-cost methods for general wastewater treatment. They may also provide irrigation reservoirs for struggling farms during times of drought. As urbanization continues to spread, retention ponds are becoming more common in new housing developments. These ponds reduce the risk of flooding and erosion damage from excess storm water runoff in local communities. Experimental ponds are used to test hypotheses in

11615-408: The way they do, to understand landform history and dynamics and to predict changes through a combination of field observations, physical experiments and numerical modeling . Geomorphology is practiced within physical geography , geology , geodesy , engineering geology , archaeology and geotechnical engineering . This broad base of interests contributes to many research styles and interests within

11730-493: The wide array of food sources though biotic interaction. They, therefore, provide an important source of biological diversity in landscapes. Opposite to long standing ponds are vernal ponds . These ponds dry up for part of the year and are so called because they are typically at their peak depth in the spring (the meaning of "vernal" comes form the Latin word for spring ). Naturally occurring vernal ponds do not usually have fish,

11845-515: The word was carried abroad with emigrants. However, some parts of New England contain "ponds" that are actually the size of a small lake when compared to other countries. In the United States, natural pools are often called ponds. Ponds for a specific purpose keep the adjective, such as "stock pond", used for watering livestock. 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

11960-458: The works of the Greek poet Theocritus (c. 316 - c. 260 BC). The Romantic period poet William Wordsworth created a modern, more realistic form of pastoral with Michael, A Pastoral Poem (1800). An early form of landscape poetry, Shanshui poetry , developed in China during the third and fourth centuries A.D. Topographical poetry is a genre of poetry that describes, and often praises,

12075-464: The world depict little that could really be called landscape , although ground-lines and sometimes indications of mountains, trees or other natural features are included. The earliest "pure landscapes" with no human figures are frescos from Minoan Greece of around 1500 BCE. Hunting scenes, especially those set in the enclosed vista of the reed beds of the Nile Delta from Ancient Egypt, can give

12190-521: The world, such as California, the vernal ponds have rare and endangered plant species. On the coastal plain, they provide habitat for endangered frogs such as the Mississippi Gopher Frog . Often groups of ponds in a given landscape - so called 'pondscapes' - offer especially high biodiversity benefits compared to single ponds. A group of ponds provides a higher degree of habitat complexity and habitat connectivity. Many ponds undergo

12305-623: The year or more.' Other European biologists have set the upper size limit at 5 hectares (50,000 m ; 12 acres). In North America, even larger bodies of water have been called ponds; for example, Crystal Lake at 33 acres (130,000 m ; 13 ha), Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts at 61 acres (250,000 m ; 25 ha), and nearby Spot Pond at 340 acres (140 ha). There are numerous examples in other states, where bodies of water less than 10 acres (40,000 m ; 4.0 ha) are being called lakes. As

12420-457: Was a change in the way people perceived and valued the landscape. In particular, after William Gilpin 's Observations on the River Wye was published in 1770, the idea of the picturesque began to influence artists and viewers. Gilpin advocated approaching the landscape "by the rules of picturesque beauty," which emphasized contrast and variety. Edmund Burke 's A Philosophical Enquiry into

12535-433: Was a contrasting poetic movement which lasted for centuries, with a focused on the nature found in gardens, in backyards, and in the cultivated countryside. Fields and Gardens poetry is one of many Classical Chinese poetry genres . One of the main practitioners of the Fields and Gardens poetry genre was Tao Yuanming (also known as Tao Qian (365–427), among other names or versions of names). Tao Yuanming has been regarded as

12650-407: Was determined to stress the agency of culture as a force in shaping the visible features of the Earth's surface in delimited areas. Within his definition, the physical environment retains a central significance, as the medium with and through which human cultures act. His classic definition of a 'cultural landscape' reads as follows: The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by

12765-529: Was felt throughout Europe, as well as on major Victorian novelists in Britain, such as Emily Brontë , Mrs Gaskell , George Eliot , and Thomas Hardy , as well as John Cowper Powys in the 20th-century. Margaret Drabble in A Writer's Britain suggests that Thomas Hardy "is perhaps the greatest writer of rural life and landscape" in English. Among European writers influenced by Scott were Frenchmen Honoré de Balzac and Alexandre Dumas and Italian Alessandro Manzoni . Manzoni's famous novel The Betrothed

12880-513: Was founded in Russia in the early 20th century by L. S. Berg and others, and outside Russia by the German S. Passarge. The conception of landscape as the relationship between various components of natural environments and geochemisty was devoted by soviet scientist Viktor Sochava, based on the ideas of american geographer George Van Dyne Integrated landscape management is a way of managing

12995-567: Was inspired by Walter Scott 's Ivanhoe . Also influenced by Romanticism's approach to landscape was the American novelist Fenimore Cooper , who was admired by Victor Hugo and Balzac and characterized as the "American Scott ." Landscape in Chinese poetry has often been closely tied to Chinese landscape painting, which developed much earlier than in the West. Many poems evoke specific paintings, and some are written in more empty areas of

13110-524: Was particularly influential. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk , the gardens of the future Emperor Paul . It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century. Landscape architecture is a multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of botany , horticulture ,

13225-464: Was typical for many monastery 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 or raised. In Nepal artificial ponds were essential elements of the ancient drinking water supply system . These ponds were fed with rainwater, water coming in through canals , their own springs, or

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