ARTIFICIAL LAKES, PONDS

Basins purposely excavated by man and filled with water by catchment from run-off, by pumping or diversion of natural water bodies. Definitely artificial are those ponds constructed for farm use, for receiving factory wastes, sewage, etc. However, there are degrees of artificiality. Bodies of water impounded by dams across rivers are artificial only to a degree as are lakes whose basins have been altered by dredging or filling or whose levels has been raised or lowered respectively by dams across outlets or by dredging outlets. A gravel pit or stone quarry is patently an artificial basin, but its filling with water, after abandonment, may be a natural process. Ponds occupying mine cave-in pits can hardly be accepted as natural geomorphological features, neither are they intentionally constructed and filled with water by man. Wherever man has made use of the water or occupied the adjacent land, he has modified natural lakes to some degree, and to that degree made them artificial.