Water bodies in the context of "Oxygen cycle"

A landscape 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 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, 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 the visible features of an area of land is referred to as landscaping.

A watercraft or waterborne vessel is any vehicle designed for travel across or through water bodies, such as a boat, ship, hovercraft, submersible or submarine.

Stormwater, also written storm water, is water that originates from precipitation (storm), including heavy rain and meltwater from hail and snow. Stormwater can soak into the soil (infiltrate) and become groundwater, be stored on depressed land surface in ponds and puddles, evaporate back into the atmosphere, or contribute to surface runoff. Most runoff is conveyed directly as surface water to nearby streams, rivers or other large water bodies (wetlands, lakes and oceans) without treatment.

In natural landscapes, such as forests, soil absorbs much of the stormwater. Plants also reduce stormwater by improving infiltration, intercepting precipitation as it falls, and by taking up water through their roots. In developed environments, such as cities, unmanaged stormwater can create two major issues: one related to the volume and timing of runoff (flooding) and the other related to potential contaminants the water is carrying (water pollution). In addition to the pollutants carried in stormwater runoff, urban runoff is being recognized as a cause of pollution in its own right.

The anamniotes are an informal group of vertebrates comprising all fish and amphibians, which lay their eggs in aquatic environments. They are distinguished from the amniotes (reptiles, birds and mammals), which can reproduce on dry land either by laying shelled eggs or by carrying fertilized eggs within the female. Older sources, particularly before the 20th century, may refer to anamniotes as "lower vertebrates" and amniotes as "higher vertebrates", based on the antiquated idea of the evolutionary great chain of being.

The name "anamniote" is a back-formation word created by adding the prefix an- to the word amniote, which in turn refers to the amnion, an extraembryonic membrane present during the amniotes' embryonic development which serves as a biochemical barrier that shields the embryo from environmental fluctuations by regulating the oxygen, carbon dioxide and metabolic waste exchanges and secreting a cushioning fluid. As the name suggests, anamniote embryos lack an amnion during embryonic development, and therefore rely on the presence of external water to provide oxygen and help dilute and excrete waste products (particularly ammonia) via diffusion in order for the embryo to complete development without being intoxicated by their own metabolites. This means anamniotes are almost always dependent on an aqueous (or at least very moist) environment for reproduction and are thus restricted to spawning in or near water bodies. They are also highly sensitive to chemical and temperature variation in the surrounding water, and are also more vulnerable to egg predation and parasitism.