A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption (an explosion which occurs when groundwater comes into contact with hot lava or magma). A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake, which may also be called a maar. Maars range in size from across and from deep. Most maars fill with water to form natural lakes. Most maars have low rims composed of a mixture of loose fragments of volcanic rocks and rocks torn from the walls of the diatreme. Etymology The name maar comes from a Moselle Franconian dialect word used for the circular lakes of the Daun area of Germany. The word evolved from its first use in German in the modern geological sense in 1819 and is now used in English and in the geological sciences recognising that the lake may no longer exist and that as the lake is formed after initially ground or subsurface water interacts with a magma intrusion to create an explosion crater as the term for the explosion crater, even if water from rainfall might always have drained from the crater after the formation event. The present definition of the term relates to both its common and scientific discourse use in language over two centuries. Depending upon context there may be other descriptors available to use in the geological sciences such as the term tuff ring or maar-diatreme volcanoes. These last are volcanoes produced by explosive eruptions that cut deeply into the country rock with the maar being "the crater cut into the ground and surrounded by an ejecta ring".. A recent geological clarification of a maar is "Maar volcanoes are distinguished from other small volcanoes in having craters with their floor lying below the pre-eruptive surface". Maar lakes and dry maars Maar lakes, also referred to simply as maars, occur when groundwater or precipitation fills the funnel-shaped and usually round hollow of the maar depression formed by volcanic explosions. Examples of these types of maar are the three maars at Daun in the Eifel mountains of Germany. A dry maar results when a maar lake dries out, becomes aggraded or silted up. An example of the latter is the Eckfelder Maar. Near Steffeln is the Eichholzmaar (also called the Gussweiher) which has dried out during the last century and is being renaturalised into a maar. In some cases the underlying rock is