Endorheic basin

An endorheic basin is a drainage basin with no outlet to the sea. Water remains within it, collecting in lakes or wetlands or evaporating from dry sinks.

Drainage basin: An area of land where precipitation drains to a common outlet or collection point. An endorheic basin is the closed-outlet form of a drainage basin.
Caspian Sea: The world's largest inland body of water, bordered by Europe and Asia. It occupies the terminal lowland of the vast Caspian endorheic basin.
Water balance: An accounting of water entering, leaving, and being stored within a system. In a closed basin, precipitation and inflow must balance evaporation, seepage, and storage change.
Endemism: The condition of a species being native to and restricted to a particular geographic area. Isolation among basin lakes can foster species found nowhere else.
Exorheic basin: A drainage basin whose surface water ultimately flows to the sea. It is the direct drainage opposite of an endorheic basin.
Evaporation: The change of a liquid into vapor at its surface. Evaporation is often the main way water leaves an endorheic basin.
Aral Sea: A formerly large Central Asian lake that has greatly shrunk since the twentieth century. It lies in a closed basin where river diversion accelerated the lake's decline.
Irrigation: The artificial application of water to land to support crop growth. Irrigation can reduce river inflows to terminal lakes and concentrate salts in basin soils.
Wetland: Land saturated with water permanently or seasonally, supporting water-adapted soils and organisms. Wetlands form where internal drainage concentrates water in low-lying parts of a basin.
Meromictic lake: A lake whose water layers do not mix completely on a regular seasonal cycle. Layering describes lake circulation, not whether a basin drains to the sea.

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