Anoxia: Oxygen deficiency in environmental locations such as sediments and bodies of water.

Anthropogenic: Human influences on the environment.

Effluents: Water discharged from one source into a separate body of water.

Endocrine disrupters: Pollutants that enter the environment that have molecular similarity to animal hormones and can disrupt the animal's endocrine system.

Euryhaline: Organisms with the capacity to live within a wide range of water salinity.

Euthropication: The process by which increased levels of nutrients enter a body of water.

Groundwater: Water beneath the ground found in the zone of saturation.

Pressure gradient: A graded change in the level of water pressure that occurs over distance.

Sediments: The material that collects at the bottom of a body of water.

Seiche: Oscillations that occur in a land locked body of water.

Subduction: The process in which one plate of the lithosphere descends beneath another.

Subsidence: Sinking, settling, or other processes of lowering of parts of the earth's crust.

Tectonic: The geological processes by which rocks are deformed and that produces features of the earth's crust.

Turbidity: Disturbed sediments within a body of water that decrease water clarity.

Watershed: Area of land that contributes to a specific water system.