Snowmelt in the context of Salt

Surface water is water located on top of land, forming terrestrial (surrounding by land on all sides) waterbodies, and may also be referred to as blue water, opposed to the seawater and waterbodies like the ocean.

The vast majority of surface water is produced by precipitation. As the climate warms in the spring, snowmelt runs off towards nearby streams and rivers contributing towards a large portion of human drinking water. Levels of surface water lessen as a result of evaporation as well as water moving into the ground becoming ground-water. Alongside being used for drinking water, surface water is also used for irrigation, wastewater treatment, livestock, industrial uses, hydropower, and recreation. For USGS water-use reports, surface water is considered freshwater when it contains less than 1,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L) of dissolved solids.

The Sistan Basin is an inland endorheic basin encompassing parts of southwestern Afghanistan and parts of southeastern Iran. It is one of the driest regions in the world and an area subject to prolonged droughts. Its watershed is a system of rivers flowing from the highlands of Afghanistan into freshwater lakes and marshes and then to its ultimate destination: Afghanistan's saline Godzareh Depression, part of the extensive Sistan terminal basin. The Helmand River drains the basin's largest watershed, fed mainly by snowmelt from the mountains of Hindu Kush, but other rivers contribute also.

A basalt hill, known as Mount Khajeh, rises beside the lakes and marshes of the basin.

Urban flooding is the inundation of land or property in cities or other built environment, caused by rainfall or coastal storm surges overwhelming the capacity of drainage systems, such as storm sewers. Urban flooding can occur regardless of whether or not affected communities are located within designated floodplains or near any body of water. It is triggered for example by an overflow of rivers and lakes, flash flooding or snowmelt. During the flood, stormwater or water released from damaged water mains may accumulate on property and in public rights-of-way. It can seep through building walls and floors, or backup into buildings through sewer pipes, cellars, toilets and sinks.

There are several types of urban flooding, each with a different cause. City planners distinguish pluvial flooding (flooding caused by heavy rain), fluvial flooding (caused by a nearby river overflowing its banks), or coastal flooding (often caused by storm surges). Urban flooding is a hazard to both the population and infrastructure. Some well known disaster events include the inundations of Nîmes (France) in 1998 and Vaison-la-Romaine (France) in 1992, the flooding of New Orleans (United States) in 2005, and the flooding in Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Brisbane during the 2010–2011 Queensland floods in Australia, the 2022 eastern Australia floods, and more recently the 2024 Rio Grande do Sul floods in Brazil.

Lake Hāmūn (Persian: دریاچه هامون, Daryāche-ye Hāmūn; Pashto: هامون ډنډ), or the Hamoun Oasis, is a seasonal lake and wetlands in the endorheic Sīstān Basin in the Sistan region on the Afghanistan–Iran border. In Iran, it is also known as Hāmūn-e Helmand, Hāmūn-e Hīrmand, or Daryāche-ye Sīstān ("Lake Sīstān").

Hāmūn is a generic term for shallow lakes (or lagoons), usually seasonal, that occur in the deserts of southeast Iran and adjacent areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a product of snowmelt in nearby mountains in spring. The term Hāmūn Lake (or Lake Hāmūn) equally applies to Hāmūn-e Helmand (entirely in Iran), as well to the shallow lakes Hāmūn-e Sabari and Hāmūn-e Puzak, which extend into the territory of present-day Afghanistan with the latter almost entirely inside Afghanistan.

The San Juan River is a major tributary of the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States, providing the chief drainage for the Four Corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. Originating as snowmelt in the San Juan Mountains (part of the Rocky Mountains) of Colorado, it flows 383 miles (616 km) through the deserts of northern New Mexico and southeastern Utah to join the Colorado River at Glen Canyon.

The river drains a high, arid region of the Colorado Plateau. Along its length, it is often the only significant source of fresh water for many miles. The San Juan is also one of the muddiest rivers in North America, carrying an average of 25 million US tons (22.6 million t) of silt and sediment each year.

A mountain stream is a brook or stream, usually with a steep gradient, flowing down a mountainside. Its swift flow rate often transports large quantities of rock, gravel, soil, wood or even entire logs with the stream. The main characteristic of mountain streams in the Alpine region is their steep gradient and sharply varying rates of flow within a short period of time, as a result of snowmelt and sudden storms. Streams of such nature are rarer in gently rolling countryside, although they may occur on scarp slopes where, although the height difference is not so great, they tend to have a larger catchment area than mountain streams.

Mountain streams may be broadly divided into three sections. In the "catchment funnel" (Sammeltrichter) high on the mountainsides, water and eroded soil, rock and gravel are gathered. The stream then flows at high speed through a "drainage channel" (Abflussrinne) into the "alluvial fan" where the transported debris is deposited.

Tulare Lake (/tʊˈlɛəri/ ) or Tache Lake (Yokuts: Pah-áh-su, Pah-áh-sē) is an ephemeral freshwater lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. Historically, Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River in surface area. For thousands of years, from the Paleolithic onward, Tulare Lake was a uniquely rich area, which supported perhaps the largest population of Native Americans north of present-day Mexico.

In the second half of the 19th century, Tulare Lake was dried up by diverting its tributaries for irrigation and municipal water uses. In modern times, it is usually a dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes. The lake reappears during unusually high levels of rainfall or snowmelt as it did in 1942, 1969, 1983, 1997, 1998, and 2023.

Remediation of contaminated sites with cement, also called solidification/stabilization with cement (S/S with cement) is a common method for the safe environmental remediation of contaminated land with cement. The cement solidifies the contaminated soil and prevents pollutants from moving, such as rain causing leaching of pollutants into the groundwater or being carried into streams by rain or snowmelt. Developed in the 1950s, the technology is widely used today to treat industrial hazardous waste and contaminated material at brownfield sites i.e. abandoned or underutilized properties that are not being redeveloped because of fears that they may be contaminated with hazardous waste. S/S provides an economically viable means of treating contaminated sites. This technology treats and contains contaminated soil on site thereby reducing the need for landfills.