Part 1: Surface Water on EcoHearth.com

By John Potter

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This is the first in a series of articles I’ve written for EcoHearth.com about the perils facing fresh water supplies.
I hope you enjoy it.

Fresh Water Supplies At Risk, Part 1: Surface Water

The water on this planet is finite. Even so, although we use it, we never lose it. Rather, water cycles through the environment and returns to us. In one simplified example, when a droplet of rain falls, it runs along the ground into a river that carries it to the sea. There it eventually evaporates into the atmosphere and becomes rain again. Along the way, that droplet may have been drunk by an animal or taken in by the roots of a tree, but in the end it moves through the same basic cycle again and again. Although we cannot remove water from this cycle, we can redistribute it so that an area has more or less. We also have the capacity to pollute it to such a degree that it is unusable or even poisonous.

Although water covers 70% of our planet’s surface, nearly all of it is difficult to use or access. According to the U.S. Geological Survey 97 percent of Earth’s water exists in the oceans as saltwater, 2.061% is frozen in glaciers and icecaps, 0.903% is underground, and 0.027% is part of the atmosphere or in plants and animals (including us). This leaves just 0.009 percent as surface water in lakes, streams, rivers and the like.

Put another way, of the 1% of Earth’s liquid and potable H2O, almost all is locked away far underground. Even so, we have enough to meet our present needs. This may not always be the case. As our population increases, so do our requirements. We also continue to pollute our available fresh water at an alarming rate and use much of the rest inefficiently.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON ECOHEARTH.COM

Fresh Water Supplies At Risk Series:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part3,
Part4