How does the water of an oxbow lake stay there despite it being cut off from a supply of water? What stops it evaporating like a giant puddle?
In: Physics
Quite often they do eventually evaporate, it just takes an incredibly long time since there can be a lot of water in them. They also get replenished by things like rain and runoff, which slows the rate of eventual evaporation.
The earth near a river is usually soaked with groundwater. This groundwater replenishes the water evaporating from such a lake, or any pond that doesn’t have visible streams flowing in.
It’s cut off from the river as a supply of water, not from any source of water. There can be groundwater that’s coming across underground from the river. There can be runoff from the land higher than the lake that will drain there instead of into the river. Water is one of those insidiously persistent things. If there’s a route to a lower spot or an area of lower pressure, the water will find it’s way there…
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