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 Within the interior of the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Outlying Areas, with the exception of the Great Lakes, inland water includes all lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers, streams, creeks, or similar bodies of water recorded in the TIGER data base as a two-dimensional feature (rather than as a single line). Rivers and bays that empty into large embayments, the Great Lakes, the oceans, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bering Sea are treated as inland water from the point at which they are narrower than one nautical mile across.

Coastal water refers to any embayments across which one can draw a closure line from 1 to 24 nautical miles in length (inland from the point at which the closure line is one mile or less, the water is treated as inland water). This line separates the coastal water from the territorial sea. For example, the coastal water of the Chesapeake Bay extends from this closure line towards the shoreline, and ends where the bay and its tributaries narrow to less than one nautical mile, where the water becomes classified as inland water.

The territorial sea consists of water located between the 3-mile limit and the shoreline or the line that represents the extent of either inland or coastal water. It includes portions of the oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Bering Sea, but does not include the Great Lakes.

This includes the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair. Inland water also includes embayments of the Great Lakes, using the same criteria that distinguish it from coastal and territorial waters.

illustrates the geographic relationships between inland water, coastal water, and the territorial sea. Area Measurement/Water Classification15-7