A water column is a conceptual column of water from surface to bottom sediments. This concept is used chiefly for environmental studies evaluating the stratification or mixing (e.g., by wind-induced currents) of the thermal or chemically stratified layers in a lake, stream or ocean. Some of the common parameters analyzed in the water column are: pH, turbidity, temperature, salinity, total dissolved solids, various pesticides, pathogens and a wide variety of chemicals and biota.
The concept of water column is quite important, since many aquatic phenomena are explained by the incomplete vertical mixing of chemical, physical or biological parameters. For example, when studying the metabolism of benthic organisms, it is the specific bottom layer concentration of available chemicals in the water column that is meaningful, rather than the average value of those chemicals throughout the water column.
Hydrostatic pressure can be analyzed by the height of a water column, which effectively yields the pressure at a given depth of the column.
The term "water column" is also commonly used in scuba diving to describe the area in which divers ascend and descend.
Read more about Water Column: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or column:
“Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)