Hydrological Cycle Essay

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Hydrological cycle is a sequence of conditions through which water passes or circulates on and below earth’s surface and atmosphere. In simpler term water cycle is the nature’s way of recycling water on earth.

Phases of water cycle:
Water cycle consists of following phases
1. Evaporation: It is the process by which water changes from liquid to gaseous state.
2. Condensation: The process by which a gas changes to a liquid form in atmosphere.
3. Precipitation: Clouds in the air drop rain on land in the form of water, hail or snow.
4. Transpiration: The process by which plants release water vapor through leaves of plants
5. Accumulation: Water gets collected in ocean, seas and lakes

There are many human activities that are responsible for causing problems in the water cycle. Some of the human activities and their impact on the hydrological cycle are explained below.

1. Urbanization: Soil is considered as water reservoir. Urbanization acts in creating amount of impermeable surface due to construction of buildings, roads, drainage, sewage, flood relief channel etc. It reduces the amount of infiltration and percolation. Water tends to experiment the runoff process rather than infiltration. This contributes to increase in …show more content…

Global warming: Certain gases in the atmosphere help keep the earth warm. Without these greenhouse gases, the earth would be extremely cold. Many human activities (Combustion of fossil fuel etc) increase the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is believed to be causing global warming. More warmer the air more evaporation will occur and warm air also holds more water. This intensifies the water cycle meaning that in areas around water, there may be more clouds and precipitation but in areas that are away from bodies of water, there may be few clouds and less precipitation leading to dry soil, plants dying, wells drying up, etc. Global warming also leads to increase the melting of mountains which lead to increase in ocean level

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