Named Natural Features and Geographic Landscapes of Hohe Tauern National Park

A stream is a natural flowing watercourse contained within a channel, generally smaller than a river but defined primarily by local naming and hydrological context. Streams may be perennial, seasonal, intermittent, spring-fed, glacial, or ephemeral and often form tributaries within larger drainage networks. No universal width or discharge threshold cleanly separates a stream from a river.

A glacier is a persistent body of land ice formed through the long-term accumulation and compaction of snow and capable of deforming or flowing under its own weight. Glaciers occupy mountain valleys, icefields, plateaus, or polar terrain and shape landscapes through erosion, transport, deposition, and meltwater. The category excludes seasonal snowfields and sea ice unless a source explicitly identifies a true glacier.

A river is a substantial natural watercourse that flows through a defined channel toward another river, lake, wetland, sea, or inland basin. Its system may include tributaries, distributaries, floodplains, seasonal reaches, gorges, waterfalls, and deltas far beyond any single mapped park relationship. The distinction from a stream depends on local convention, scale, and source usage rather than one universal rule.

A lake is an inland body of standing water occupying a natural or substantially natural basin and supplied by precipitation, groundwater, streams, rivers, meltwater, or combinations of these sources. Lakes can form through tectonic, volcanic, glacial, karst, fluvial, coastal, or impact processes and may drain externally or remain closed. Size alone does not consistently separate lakes from ponds, so the established entity name should be respected.

A reservoir is a body of stored water created or substantially modified through a dam, impoundment, excavation, diversion, or other managed water-control system. Although it can become integrated into surrounding landscapes and ecosystems, its form or water regime is materially influenced by human infrastructure. It must therefore remain distinct from a naturally formed lake in generated descriptions.

A pond is a relatively small body of standing water occupying a natural or modified depression. It may be permanent, seasonal, spring-fed, rain-fed, stream-connected, glacial, karstic, or biologically influenced, but none of those properties follows from the label alone. The boundary between pond and lake varies across local naming systems and cannot be reduced to one universal size or depth threshold.

A waterfall is a named point or reach where a river or stream descends abruptly over a vertical face, steep rock step, or sequence of drops. Its form may reflect resistant rock layers, faulting, glacial hanging valleys, lava flows, river incision, or changing channel geometry. The category includes single drops and cascades recognized as one feature but does not imply perennial flow or a particular height.