What is lagoon?

What Does lagoon Mean

From the Latin lacuna , the notion of lagoon refers to the natural reservoir of water that can have different dimensions and form from the mouth of a stream or river or, failing that, in periods of flooding due to the overflow of one of them and the subsequent stagnation of the waters. They are generally made up of salty water , although there are lagoons that have sweet ones. It is worth mentioning that fresh water is that which has minimal amounts of dissolved mineral salts in its interior, while salt water abounds in said components; the first is found in rivers, streams and springs and the second in the sea and most of the lagoons.

Lagoons can form for different reasons. One of them is from the action of tectonic forces , which create depressions through folding of the earth's crust, generating the uplifts known as domes , separated by depressions ( buckets ) in which a trench is created that fills with water.

Another cause of the formation of a lagoon can be the existence of a volcano . Volcanoes can generate suitable spaces for water to accumulate when they erupt, since the material they expel forms craters in the ground, they can be up to about 1.6 kilometers in diameter.
Another way for the formation of these pools is the collapse of the bank of a river ; the accumulation of solid material in certain areas prevents the water from escaping, trapping it in an isolated area. These lagoons are temporary, when a certain amount of time passes without rain, the water that contains it evaporates and therefore, the lagoon disappears. Another way in which it can be built is as a consequence of the overflow of a certain tributary or because it is a suitable place for its mouth.
In another sense, a gap is a memory failure , the lack of a person's intellectual formation or the gaps that have been left in some manuscript or print due to the action of time or some other type of cause.
Differences between lakes and lagoons
Many times both concepts are confused, coming to believe that the simple difference between the two is in size, which is totally wrong since there are certain characteristics that an aquifer extension must have to be considered one or the other.
The difference between the two types of reservoir is not related to their size but to the type of water they contain . Although both can be fed by rivers and streams, the lake has fresh water, since it is in the middle of a pass, that is, it has an inlet and an outlet and the water circulates through the pool without staking.

In the case of lagoons, they are also fed by rivers and streams but they do not have an outlet, so the only way it can be drained is through evaporation. Its waters are salty because they contain a large amount of minerals, which are stored in the soil when the water evaporates; That is why it is said that the lagoons are closed water mirrors , because they have stagnant water.
In any case, it is necessary to clarify that some lagoons have fresh water, which is generally related to the type of soil in which it is found, where minerals are not abundant and when the water evaporates, they are absorbed by the soil and disappear Of the surface.
The largest lake in the world is the Caspian , which is often classified as an inland sea . It has an area of 371,000 km² and an average depth of 170 meters . As for the deepest lake in the world, it is Baikal , with 1,637 meters deep .

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