Open-pit mining
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Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth using a pit, sometimes known as a borrow pit.
Rock blasting at the large open-pit Twin Creeks gold mine in Nevada, United States. Note the size of the excavators for scale (foreground, left), and that the bottom of the mine is not visible.
The giant bucket-wheel excavators in the German Rhineland coal mines are among the world's biggest land vehicles.
Kittilä Gold Mine in Kittilä, Finland is the largest primary gold producer in Europe.
Note the angled and stepped sides of the Sunrise Dam Gold Mine, Australia.
Lake
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A lake is a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although they may be connected with the ocean by rivers, such as Lake Ontario. Most lakes are freshwater and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume.
Lac Gentau in the Ossau Valley of the Pyrenees, France
Lake Michigan during a storm near the Ludington Lighthouse
The crater lake of Mount Rinjani, Indonesia
Lake Kaniere is a glacial lake in the West Coast region of New Zealand.