One hydrology

One hydrology book proposes to define the term “lake” as a body of water with the following five characteristics:[3]

it partially or totally fills one or several basins connected by straits
has essentially the same water level in all parts (except for relatively short-lived variations caused by wind, varying ice cover, large inflows, etc.)

it does not have regular intrusion of seawater
a considerable portion of the sediment suspended in the water is captured by the basins (for this to happen they need to have a sufficiently small inflow-to-volume ratio)
the area measured at the mean wa

ter level exceeds an arbitrarily chosen threshold (for instance, one hectare)
With the exception of the seawater intrusion criterion, the others have been accepted or elaborated upon by other hydrology publications.[9][10]