Ephemeral

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Ephemeral

Ephemeral things (from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
ef?µe??? - ephemeros, literally "lasting only one day") are transitory, existing only briefly. Typically the term is used to describe objects found in nature, although it can describe a wide range of things.

phemeral waterbody is a wetland

Wetland

File:Mangrove trees in Everglades.JPGA wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated with moisture either permanently or seasonally. Such areas may also be covered partially or completely by shallow pools of water....
, spring

Spring (hydrosphere)

A spring is a point where groundwater flows out from the ground, and is thus where the aquifer surface meets the ground surface.Dependent upon the constancy of the water source , a spring may be ephemeral or Perennial stream ....
, stream

Stream

A stream is a body of water less than 60 feet wide with a current , confined within a stream bed and stream banks. Depending on its locale or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to as brook, beck, Burn , creek, crick, kill, lick , rill, river syke, bayou, rivu...
, river

River

A river is a natural stream of water, usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, or another stream. In some cases a river flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water....
, pond

Pond

A pond is a body of water smaller than a lake, both being examples of terrain feature. Although the term pond is universally used to describe waterbodies that are smaller than lakes, an internationally recognised size cutoff has not yet been agreed, with values ranging from 2 hectares to 8 hectares used to distinguish the smaller from...
or lake

Lake

A lake is a terrain feature , a body of liquid on the surface of a world that is localized to the bottom of basin and moves slowly if it moves at all....
that only exists for a short period following precipitation

Precipitation (meteorology)

File:MeanMonthlyP.gifIn meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of Atmosphere water vapor that is deposited on the earth's surface....
or snowmelt

Snowmelt

In hydrology, snowmelt is surface runoff produced from melting snow. It can also be used to describe the period or season during which such runoff is produced....
.

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Ephemeral things (from Greek

Greek language

Geographical examples

An ephemeral waterbody is a wetland

Wetland

Spring (hydrosphere)

Stream

River

Pond

Lake

Precipitation (meteorology)

File:MeanMonthlyP.gifIn meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of Atmosphere water vapor that is deposited on the earth's surface....
or snowmelt

Snowmelt

In hydrology, snowmelt is surface runoff produced from melting snow. It can also be used to describe the period or season during which such runoff is produced....
. They are not the same as intermittent or seasonal waterbodies, which exist for longer periods, but not all year round.

Examples of ephemeral streams are the Luni river in Rajasthan, India, Ugab River

Ugab River

Ugab River is an ephemeral river that only flows above the surface of its sandy bed a few days each year, but its subterranean water is an important resource for species in the Damaraland region of northern Namibia, including the rare desert elephant....
in Southern Africa

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics, consisting of numerous territories....
, and a number of small ephemeral watercourse

Watercourse

A watercourse is any flowing body of water. These include rivers, streams, brooks, anabranches et cetera....
s that drain Talak

Talak

Talak is a sandy sand dune region in western Niger.This area extensively watered by rivers makes it less barren than the rest of the Sahara desert....
in northern Niger

Niger

Niger , officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east....
. Other notable ephemeral rivers include the Todd River

Todd River

The Todd River is an Ephemeral in the southern Northern Territory, central Australia. The origins of the Todd River begin in the MacDonnell Ranges, where it flows past the Telegraph Station, almost through the center of Alice Springs, through Heavitree Gap at the southern end of Alice Springs and continuing on for some distance, passing throu...
and Sandover River

Sandover River

The Sandover River is a river in northeast Central Australia. It is the only major tributary of the Georgina River that does not rise in western Queensland....
in Central Australia

Central Australia

Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs, Northern Territory in Australia....
as well as the Son River

Son River

The Son River or Sone of central India is the largest of the Ganges' southern tributaries. A British 1850s diary shows that the river was written in English as Soane....
, Batha River

Batha River

The Batha River is an ephemeral river in Chad. As with any rivers or lakes in this region, its existence depends on the amount of rainfall. The river's delta is at Lake Fitri in Chad....
and the Trabancos River

Trabancos River

The Trabancos is a river in Spain which flows between the Zapardiel and the Guare?a rivers and is a tributary of the Douro. The source of the Trabancos is in Mora?a, a region in the north of the ?vila , near Blascomill?n....
.

Lake Carnegie

Lake Carnegie (Western Australia)

Lake Carnegie is an ephemeral lake in Western Australia. It fills with water only during periods of significant rainfall. In dry years, it is reduced to a muddy marsh....
in Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a States and territories of Australia occupying the entire western third of the Australia . The nation's largest state and the second largest subnational entity in the world, it has 2.1 million inhabitants , 85% of whom live in the south-west corner of the state....
and Lake Cowal

Lake Cowal

Lake Cowal is the largest inland lake in New South Wales, Australia. The lake is ephemeral lake, being fed by the small Bland Creek and by the occasional flooding of the Lachlan River....
in New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is Australia's oldest and most populous States and territories of Australia, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria and south of Queensland....
are ephemeral lakes. Lake Tuzkan and Mystic Lake

Mystic Lake (California)

Mystic Lake is an ephemeral lake in the San Jacinto Valley of western Riverside County, California, located east of Lake Perris, between Moreno Valley, California and San Jacinto, California....
in California are ephemeral.

There are also ephemeral islands such as Banua Wuhu

Banua Wuhu

Banua Wuhu submarine volcano rises more than 400 m from the sea floor in the Sangihe Islands of Indonesia. Historical records show that several ephemeral islands were formed and disappeared....
and Home Reef

Home Reef

Home Reef is an ephemeral island built by a submarine volcano whose top has repeatedly breached the surface and was subsequently eroded by wave action again....
, which reappear and disappear beneath the waves.

Biological examples

Many plants are adapted to an ephemeral lifestyle

Ephemeral Plant

An ephemeral plant marked by short life cycles, usually six to eight weeks. The word ephemeral means transitory or quickly fading. In regards to plants, it refers to several distinct growth strategies....
, in which they spend most of the year or longer as seeds before conditions are right for a brief period of growth and reproduction. The spring ephemeral plant mouse-ear cress is a well known example. Animals can be ephemeral, with brine shrimp

Brine shrimp

Brine shrimp is the English name of the genus Artemia of aquatic crustaceans. Artemia, the only genus in the family Artemiidae, have evolved little since the Triassic period....
being an example.

Ephemeral artifacts

Ephemeral can also be used as an adjective to refer to a fast-deteriorating importance or temporary nature of an object to a person. Brands are notoriously ephemeral assets, and magazine

Magazine

for quarterly in Heraldry see Quartering Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of Article , generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscription, or all three....
publishing was once much more ephemeral than it is today.

A number of art forms can be considered ephemeral because of their temporary nature. Early land art

Land art

Land art, Earthworks, or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked....
and all sand sculptures, ice sculpture

Ice sculpture

Ice sculpture is a form of sculpture that uses ice as the raw material. Sculptures from ice can be abstract or realistic and can be functional or purely decorative....
s and chalk drawings on footpaths are examples of ephemeral art. G. Augustine Lynas and Duthain Dealbh

Duthain Dealbh

Duthain Dealbh, is made up of the three Irish sculptors Daniel Doyle, Niall Magee and Alan Magee all graduates of Fine Art Sculpture, Dublin Institute of Technology , Dublin, Ireland....
create ephemeral sculptures.

Other uses

The placenta

Placenta

The placenta or afterbirth is a highly vascularized ephemeral organ present in Placentalia vertebrates that connects the developing fetal tissues to the uterine wall....
is considered an ephemeral organ

Organ (anatomy)

In biology, an organ is a biological tissue that performs a specific function or group of functions. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues....
present during gestation

Gestation

Gestation is the carrying of an embryo or fetus inside a female viviparous animal. Mammals during mammalian pregnancy can have one or more gestations at the same time ....
and pregnancy

Pregnancy

Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the uterus of a female. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or Multiple birth....
.

A sensation which is felt by a person for a certain period of time before needing replenishment can be referred to as ephemeral. Often, happiness is described as ephemeral, as one does not find it as a permanent state, with human lives always varying shades of happiness and disappointment.

In computer networking technology, an Ephemeral port

Ephemeral port

An wiktionary:ephemeral port is a Transmission Control Protocol , User Datagram Protocol , or Stream Control Transmission Protocol TCP and UDP port number that is automatically allocated from a predefined range by the Internet protocol suite stack software, typically to provide the port for the Client end of a client-server communication....
is a TCP

Transmission Control Protocol

The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is so central that the entire suite is often referred to as "TCP/IP"....
, UDP

User Datagram Protocol

The User Datagram Protocol is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, sometimes known as datagram, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol network without requiring prior communications to set up special transmission cha...
or SCTP

Stream Control Transmission Protocol

In computer networking, the Stream Control Transmission Protocol is a Transport Layer communications protocol, serving in a similar role as the popular protocols Transmission Control Protocol and User Datagram Protocol ....
port

TCP and UDP port

In computer networking, a port is an application-specific or process-specific software construct serving as a communications endpoint used by Transport layer protocols of the Internet protocol suite such as Transmission Control Protocol and User Datagram Protocol ....
which is dynamically assigned to a client application for a short period of time (the duration of time the application is running). This is in contrast to the "Well known

List of TCP and UDP port numbers

In computer networking, the protocols of the Transport Layer of the Internet Protocol Suite, most notably the Transmission Control Protocol and the User Datagram Protocol , but also other protocols, use a numerical identifier for the data structures of the endpoints for host-to-host communications....
" ports which are typically statically assigned to a specific application or service.

Ephemeral

Geographical examples

Biological examples

Ephemeral artifacts

Other uses

Further reading