Water Impact

The Earth is a giant storage container for water. The water on Earth is stored in reservoirs such as oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, snowfields, atmosphere, and groundwater. Earth’s water storage is in constant movement from the biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere. This process is called the hydrologic cycle.

As the sun shines down on Earth, the heat creates a reaction known as the hydrologic cycle. As water is heated on the Earth’s surface, it is drawn upward through evaporation. As this water is collected in to clouds, it eventually makes it way back to Earth through precipitation. This water is absorbed by the soil and plants and excess precipitation creates runoff to lakes, streams, rivers and gullies. Some precipitation runs from high areas to low areas on the earth's surface. This is known as surface runoff. Other precipitation seeps into the ground and is stored as groundwater (The Hydrologic Cycle, 2010).

Glaciers are important features in the hydrologic cycle and affect the volume, variability, and water quality of runoff in areas where they occur. Glaciers store about 75 percent of the world's freshwater (Glaciers and Icecaps, 2009).

Earth’s oceans supply most of the evaporated water found in the atmosphere. Of this evaporated water, only 91 percent of it is returned to the ocean basins by way of precipitation. The remaining nine percent is transported to areas over landmasses where climatological factors induce the formation of precipitation. The resulting imbalance between rates of evaporation and

precipitation over land and ocean is corrected by runoff and groundwater flow to the oceans (Hydrologic Cycle, 2007).

Through the processes of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, deposition, runoff, infiltration, sublimation, transportation, melting, and groundwater flow, the Earth is constantly recycling water. Whether for human consumption, irrigation, or industrial use, survival is not possible...