endorheic

English edit

WOTD – 9 November 2020

Etymology edit

PIE word
*h₁én

A satellite image of the Caspian Sea which is between Asia and Europe. The largest inland body of water in the world, it is endorheic in nature.

From English endo- (prefix meaning ‘internal, inside, within’) + Ancient Greek ῥέω (rhéō, “to flow, gush, stream”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow, stream”)) + English -ic (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining’ to forming adjectives).^[1]

Pronunciation edit

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɛndə(ʊ)ˈɹiːɪk/
Audio (RP) (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˌɛndoʊˈɹiɪk/, /-də/
Hyphenation: en‧do‧rhe‧ic

Adjective edit

endorheic (not comparable)

(hydrology) Of a basin or lake: having no outflow to an external body of water such as a river or ocean, and only losing water through evaporation or seepage into the ground.
Synonyms: closed, terminal

Antonym: exorheic
- 1937, Collected Papers: Osborn Zoological Society, Yale University, volume 19, New Haven, Conn.: Osborn Zoological Society, Yale University, →OCLC, page 94:
  [I]n some cases channels leading towards the sea may exist in an endorheic region, in which, however, there is so little rain that the entire load in the water-courses is lost through evaporation before it can reach the mouths of the channels. On the other hand all closed lakes of the kind now being considered must lie in endorheic regions.
- 1971, Francis F. Ojany, “Drainage Evolution in Kenya”, in S[imeon] H. Ominde, editor, Studies in East African Geography and Development, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 138, column 2:
  In the floor of the Rift Valley most of the streams are affected by the tectonic disturbances and are mostly fault-guided besides being endoreic.
- 1981, Maria-Rosa Miracle, “Biogeographica del Zooplàncton dels Llacs dels Pirineus [Biogeography of the Zooplankton from the Lakes of the Pyrenees]”, in Biogeografia de la Mediterrània Occidental [Biogeography of the Western Mediterranean] (Treballs de la Institució Catalana d’Història Natural [Works of the Catalan Institute of Natural History]; 9), Barcelona: Institució Catalana d’Història Natural, →ISBN, summary, page 147:
  The calanoid species more frequent in the Pyrenees is Diaptomus cyaneus, species with a relict occurrence in Dalmatia, endorreic and litoral lagoons of the western Mediterranean countries and frequent in the Pyrenees and in the North African Atlas.
- 1998, Brian Moss, “Lakes, Pools and Other Standing Waters: Some Basic Features of Their Productivity”, in Ecology of Fresh Waters: Man and Medium, Past to Future, 3rd edition, Malden, Mass., Oxford, Oxfordshire: Blackwell Publishing, →ISBN, page 198:
  In other cases, the basin may be large but the water-supply so low that there is no outflow and water leaves only by evaporation. The catchment-derived water-supply, in evaporating, leaves salts and the basin becomes an endorheic (internally drained) salt lake.
- 2002, Guadalupe de la Lanza Espino, José Luis García-Calderón, “Historical Summary of the Geology, Climate, Hydrology, Culture, and Natural Resource Utilization in the Basin of Mexico”, in Mark E. Fenn, L. I. de Bauer, Tomás Hernández-Tejeda, editors, Urban Air Pollution and Forests: Resources at Risk in the Mexico City Air Basin (Ecological Studies; 156), New York, N.Y.: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 5:
  During the Pleistocene, the Ajusco closed the fluvial drainage to form the endoreic basin, which initiated sediment accumulation that eventually covered more than half of the valley [...].
- 2002, Judith García-Rodríguez, Rosaluz Tavera, “Phytoplankton Composition and Biomass in a Shallow Monomictic Tropical Lake”, in Javier Alcocer, S. S. S. [Sudarsana] Sarma, editors, Advances in Mexican Limnology: Basic and Applied Aspects (Hydrobiologia; 467), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →ISBN, page 91, column 2:
  The basin of Lake Zempoala is endorreic. Precipitation and running off from the watershed are the only source of water income whose budget is not balanced: annual precipitation and evaporation are 1200–1500 mm and 1600 mm, respectively [...].
- 2012, Yeqiao Wang, “Remote Sensing of Protected Lands: An Overview”, in Yeqiao Wang, editor, Remote Sensing of Protected Lands (Taylor & Francis Series in Remote Sensing Applications), Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, →ISBN, section 1.4 (Remote Sensing of Frontier Lands), page 13:
  Tibetan lakes in the endorheic basins serve as a sensitive indicator to regional climate and water cycle variability.
- 2012 January–February, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 100, number 1, New Haven, Conn.: Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 April 2016, page 46:
  Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake's neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. [...] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.