how come the ground under lakes and rivers don’t drink up all the water but plain surface ground drinks up everything eventually?

Question

how come the ground under lakes and rivers don’t drink up all the water but plain surface ground drinks up everything eventually?

In: 214

Answer 1

Lakes form when the water table underneath them is saturated and cannot absorb any more water so any water stays on the surface. In most places the water table is not saturated to ground level, and so the rain water is able to soak in. This absorption takes a lot of time though, which is why it’s possible to have floods during a drought — the ground cannot soak up a suddenly huge amount of water.