How do river contribute the saltiness to the oceans?
155689
Salt comes from  dissolved rock. Rivers carry that salt from the land to the ocean. It's that simple.
1138696
The salinity of specific regions of the oceans depends on the ratio of influx of sweet water and evaporation (or in cold regions, formation of ice, which also increases the salinity of the remaining water) and on the vertical and horizontal currents. The northern Atlantic is the most saline oceanic region, if I recall correctly - probably because of much evaporation in the subtropic zone and then the gulf stream carrying the saline water north.\n\nThe dissolved salts are mainly:\n\ncations: Na+, with K+, Mg2+ and Ca2+ as important additional components\n\nanions: HCO3-, Cl- as main components, SO4(2-) a distant third.\n\nTo get the salts, simply combine to neutral compounds.
290700
(m)\n\nEveryone who has been to the beach knows that seawater is salty. Everyone also knows that fresh water in rain, rivers, and even ice is not salty. Why are some of Earth’s waters salty and others not? There are two clues that give us the answer. First, “fresh” water is not entirely free of dissolved salt. Even rainwater has traces of substances dissolved in it that were picked up during passage through the atmosphere. Much of this material that “washes out” of the atmosphere today is pollution, but there are also natural substances present.\n\nAs rainwater passes through soil and percolates through rocks, it dissolves some of the minerals, a process called weathering. This is the water we drink, and of course, we cannot taste the salt because its concentration is too low. Eventually, this water with its small load of dissolved minerals or salts reaches a stream and flows into lakes and the ocean. The annual addition of dissolved salts by rivers is only a tiny fraction of the total salt in the ocean. The dissolved salts carried by all the world’s rivers would equal the salt in the ocean in about 200 to 300 million years.\n\nA second clue to how the sea became salty is the presence of salt lakes such as the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Both are about 10 times saltier than seawater. Why are these lakes salty while most of the world’s lakes are not? Lakes are temporary storage areas for water. Rivers and streams bring water to the lakes, and other rivers carry water out of lakes. Thus, lakes are really only wide depressions in a river channel that have filled with water. Water flows in one end and out the other. \n\nThe Great Salt Lake, Dead Sea, and other salt lakes have no outlets. All the water that flows into these lakes escapes only by evaporation. When water evaporates, the dissolved salts are left behind. So a few lakes are salty because rivers carried salts to the lakes, the water in the lakes evaporated and the salts were left behind. After years and years of river inflow and evaporation, the salt content of the lake water built up to the present levels. The same process made the seas salty. Rivers carry dissolved salts to the ocean. Water evaporates from the oceans to fall again as rain and to feed the rivers, but the salts remain in the ocean. Because of the huge volume of the oceans, hundreds of millions of years of river input were required for the salt content to build to its present level. \n\nRivers are not the only source of dissolved salts. About twenty years ago, features on the crest of oceanic ridges were discovered that modified our view on how the sea became salty. These features, known as hydrothermal vents, represent places on the ocean floor where sea water that has seeped into the rocks of the oceanic crust, has become hotter, and has dissolved some of the minerals from the crust, now flows back into the ocean. With the hot water comes a large complement of dissolved minerals. Estimates of the amount of hydrothermal fluids now flowing from these vents indicate that the entire volume of the oceans could seep through the oceanic crust in about 10 million years. Thus, this process has a very important effect on salinity. The reactions between seawater and oceanic basalt, the rock of ocean crust, are not one-way, however; some of the dissolved salts react with the rock and are removed from the water.\n\nA final process that provides salts to the oceans is submarine volcanism, the eruption of volcanoes under water. This is similar to the previous process in that seawater is reacting with hot rock and dissolving some of the mineral constituents.\n\nWill the oceans continue to become saltier? Not likely. In fact the sea has had about the same salt content for many hundred of millions if not billions of years. The salt content has reached a steady state. Dissolved salts are being removed from seawater to form new minerals at the bottom of the ocean as fast as rivers and hydrothermal proce
726282
That depends on if you are a fish or a mammal. But mostly, you have to deal with the salt, either by excreting excess, tolerating high amounts and secreting or by maintaining the same concentration of salt inside your body as outside. Moving through the water also presents problems, such as streamlining and propulsion.\nIn marine mammals, their kidneys and urine are adapted to secrete high amounts of salts without loosing excess water, their body shape is made to move through the water easily and there is a seperation of the mouth and nasal cavity so they can eat underwater.
276701
the ocean is salty as it contains water colected from different sources such as rivers which bring with them different types of mineral salts before they mingle with the ocean.
264363
Good thinking, unlike some of the answers here. Anything put in or on the water displaces water and makes the water level rise. The ocean is so huge that you could not measure it unless the rock was so large you could not move it.
826959
The basic answer to that is:\nAs water falls on land and runs into the oceans it picks up minerals.\nWhen it gets to the ocean the minerals get mixed into the ocean water.\nSunlight causes the water to evaporate but leaves the minerals behind.\nThe water then falls on land again repeating the process.\nEventually the salt content in the oceans built up to where it is today. And continues to build up.
916940
Salt water has a lower freezing point.
1061323
I'm surely not an expert in this, but I'll tell you what I know.\nThe salinity of ocean water varies from place to place. The oceans that surround the polar regions are less salty than the Persian Gulf areas. Also where rivers and streams empty into the ocean, that area tends to be less salty than the open ocean.\nSalinity is reported in terms of parts per thousand ( 0/00 ).\nSalt content in ocean water ranges from .5 0/00 to 40 0/00.\nThe average ocean salinity is 35 0/00. \nI had an ocean map which showed salt content of the world oceans, but cannot find it. I know this would have been a great help answering your question.  What I do remember of it is, that most major oceans had a salt content that ranged between 32 0/00 and 35 0/00.\n32 0/00 being close to islands and continents and 35 0/00 was recorded surrounding the center of the major oceans.\nI'm sure I did not answer your question completely, but I hope I helped?
289316
They are often different due to the different water temperatures.  The total amount of dissolved salt in water decreases with temperature.
723545
It saltier then fresh water so the difference in densities is less
215900
From those choices the finest particles would have to be found near the mouth. This is because along the course of a river the speed of the river varies and at the mouth is generally the slowest point. As it enters the ocean it is likely to be flowing at its slowest speed, so its ability to carry particles is at its lowest energy level and only the very smallest particles will stay suspended. \n\nHowever, the question is not really correct with that wording and with this answer. There is no reason that the very smallest particle carried by a river cannot be found at ANY of those points along the river, and transported all the way to the mouth of the river. This also ignores the fact that rivers carry dissolved solids as well.
455476
A lot of the water came from the river in the first place. There is a net loss through plants, evaporation so I can't imagine why there is a problem of excess. sometimes the water is hotter so fish, plants have trouble.\nWhy if it is so clean, do plants get more river water instead of their "clean" water?
818829
Scientific theories behind the origins of sea salt started with Sir Edmond Halley in 1715, who proposed that salt and other minerals were carried into the sea by rivers, having been leached out of the ground by rainfall runoff. Upon reaching the ocean, these salts would be retained and concentrated as the process of evaporation (see Hydrologic cycle) removed the water. Halley noted that of the small number of lakes in the world without ocean outlets (such as the Dead Sea and the Caspian Sea, see endorheic basin), most have high salt content. Halley termed this process "continental weathering".
797061
yes.  saltwater is salty, meaning it has a lot of ions.  Lots of ions conduct electricity.
58936
All water, even rain water, contains dissolved chemicals which scientists call "salts." But not all water tastes salty. Water is fresh or salty according to individual judgment, and in making this decision man is more convinced by his sense of taste than by a laboratory test. It is one's taste buds that accept one water and reject another.\nA simple experiment illustrates this. Fill three glasses with water from the kitchen faucet. Drink from one and it tastes fresh even though some dissolved salts are naturally present. Add a pinch of table salt to the second, and the water may taste fresh or slightly salty depending on a personal taste threshold and on the amount of salt held in a "pinch." But add a teaspoon of salt to the third and your taste buds vehemently protest that this water is too salty to drink; this glass of water has about the same salt content as a glass of sea water.\nObviously, the ocean, in contrast to the water we use daily, contains unacceptable amounts of dissolved chemicals; it is too salty for human consumption. \n\nHOW SALTY IS THE OCEAN?...\nHow salty the ocean is, however, defies ordinary comprehension. Some scientists estimate that the oceans contain as much as 50 quadrillion tons (50 million billion tons) of dissolved solids.\n\nIf the salt in the sea could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet thick, about the height of a 40-story office building. The saltiness of the ocean is more understandable when compared with the salt content of a fresh-water lake. For example, when 1 cubic foot of sea water evaporates it yields about 2.2 pounds of salt, but 1 cubic foot of fresh water from Lake Michigan contains only one one-hundredth (0.01) of a pound of salt, or about one sixth of an ounce. Thus, sea water is 220 times saltier than the fresh lake water. What arouses the scientist's curiosity is not so much why the ocean is salty, but why it isn't fresh like the rivers and streams that empty into it. Further, what is the origin of the sea and of its "salts"? And how does one explain ocean water's remarkably uniform chemical composition? To these and related questions, scientists seek answers with full awareness that little about the oceans is understood.\n\n\nIllustration: Sources of salts in the ocean.\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF THE SEA...\nIn popular language, "ocean" and "sea" are used interchangeably. Today's seas are the North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans and the Antarctic waters or seas.\nScientists believe that the seas are as much as 500 million years old because animals that lived then occur as fossils in rocks which once were under ancient seas. There are several theories about the origin of the seas, but no single theory explains all aspects of this puzzle. Many earth scientists agree with the hypothesis that both the atmosphere and the oceans have accumulated gradually through geologic time from some process of "degassing" of the Earth's interior. According to this theory, the ocean had its origin from the prolonged escape of water vapor and other gases from the molten igneous rocks of the Earth to the clouds surrounding the cooling Earth. After the Earth's surface had cooled to a temperature below the boiling point of water, rain began to fall and continued to fall for centuries. As the water drained into the great hollows in the Earth's surface, the primeval ocean came into existence. The forces of gravity prevented the water from leaving the planet.\n\nSOURCES OF THE SALTS...\nSea water has been defined as a weak solution of almost everything. Ocean water is indeed a complex solution of mineral salts and of decayed biologic matter that results from the teeming life in the seas. Most of the ocean's salts were derived from gradual processes such the breaking up of the cooled igneous rocks of the Earth&#39
124011
The mouth of the river meets a larger body of water.  A delta forms from sediment deposited at the mouth of the river.  Some coastal rivers flow into estuaries, where fresh and salt water mix.