The Water Cycle
The material cycles that go on in our earth are much more important than we think. Every day we wake up, do breakfast, get ready for school or work and continue on our day. We never really stop to think about how many more schedules or systems are in progress around us. The water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle and other countless systems are taking place around us just like our own. Unfortunately, we affect those cycles more than they affect us. The cycles that go on around us won’t affect us as much because it isn’t as noticeable as how we affect those cycles and routines. It’s important to understand the severity of our actions and how, without us even knowing, we can negatively influence natural and environmental processes.
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Water rains down on us from the sky which then either enters the soil or joins with a larger body of water. Then water is evaporated back up into the sky via soil or water bodies and it is again turned into rain. This would be a simple explanation of how the water cycle works.
Some would ask how this is even minutely affected by us. We don’t live in water bodies and neither do we live in soil. Well, it isn’t as simple as that. This cycle is cut off by us when we direct water to our supplies. With the use of machinery and pipes, we can tap into the underground water sources or freshwater bodies and use it for our own benefit.
This water we use is then dirtied and sometimes ends up toxic which can cause a bad effect on the cycle. When I shower, I take a lot of time. I have long curly hair so I shampoo and then I condition my hair. In the middle I wash my body and brush my teeth. This might be the normal routine for anyone in the shower, but it shouldn’t be. I waste a lot of water during my showers. Not only that but it’s surprising how much water I waste total, during showers, morning refreshing, flushing and even drinking water. This water is then sent
Paradoxically, the planet that we inhabit is largely invisible to us. In fact, some of the most important parts of the Earth-the ones that allow us (and others) to live and breathe on this finite planet-are nearly invisible. Over the past several hundred years, scientific research and technological development has done wonders to enable us to "see" the materials, forces, and patterns that occupy and govern the Earth. Yet, despite all of these new tools (including telescopes, microscopes, and endoscopes), most of us still are not able to see the essential elements that constitute our surroundings. And since it is these components that sustain us, if we don't start "seeing" them soon we are unlikely to consider what may be happening to them as a result of current ways of life. And as long as we are not properly considering the ramifications of what we are doing, the odds are extremely small that we will manage to modify or redirect our paths in time to protect ourselves and life as we know it.
how the oxygen on earth got here, but we know we could not live without it.
that we have to start watching where we drain our polluted water, and start to
Whether we want to believe it or not water pollution is one of the world’s l...
The article by Jared Diamond called “The End of The World as We Know Them” explains to us we have the chance to change our future from previous civilianization like Mayans. One alternative that we can infer is a stronger focus on benefiting the earth and not our self. For example instead of using war to gain more resources from other countries and cause more damage to other civilization, we should all live in peace and live natural energy from the sun like solar panels. If we keep the ground that we live on, we can keep our lives that we dwell on.
Water has three stages—liquid, gas and solid. Water on Earth can be liquid as rain, streams, or oceans. It can be a solid like hail, ice or snow. It can be a gas like vapor, steam or clouds. As described by the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (2010), the hydrologic cycle is the process of water changing from liquid to gas to solid. The energy of the sun drives the changes to water. When water is heated up, it evaporates, turning into a gas to form steam or vapor. The water vapor rises with warm air that when meets cooler air, condenses to form clouds. These clouds and water vapor can be transported around the world. Precipitation is when water falls to Earth, in warmer temperatures as liquid and in temperatures, as a solid. On Earth, precipitation can evaporate again or infiltrate the Earth to become groundwater. As ground water it can collect in oceans, rivers or on snowy mountaintops and glaciers. It can also be released back into the atmosphere via transpiration, when water evaporates off soil, trees. When water evaporates, the cycle starts again.
Rain in reality is moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops. To get rain, the water condensing in the clouds has to become heavy enough to fall to Earth. To become heavier, some will collide with other droplets and become larger, and others will grow as water condenses out the air directly into the droplet, and some will do so by both methods. Eventually, if the droplets keep growing, they will reach a mass where they can't stay floating in the cloud because they are too heavy and will start to fall as rain. Before it can rain, there must be moisture or humidity in the air. In order for there to be moisture in the air, water must evaporate. The best source for the air's moisture is the oceans and sometimes lakes. Air flows over these large bodies of water picking up moisture as it evaporates off the surface. The air then flows over the land and we feel it in the form of humidity. When air rises, such as up a mountain slope, or when encountering a cold front or warm front, the air cools and the moisture condenses into clouds and rain. Because of this, areas
“97.5% of all water on Earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5% as fresh water” (Human Appropriation of the World's Fresh Water Supply). With only 2.5% of earth’s total water harmonious enough to use, we have to administrate it correctly. Iowa State University and the students are in the pursuit of discovering the best way’s to distribute the water in farming, improving quality of water, and the systems used to manage it. One of the representatives of the Iowa Water Center said, “We facilitate research related to water management and disseminate information to those in the water profession.”(Citation). This relates to everyone, because as humans we utilize water everyday. From a routinely shower, to our daily meal. In order to understand how
of rainwater that usually go into waste through runoffs. Such stored resource would be valuable whenever
Scientists believe the Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, while the Earth’s water has been present for 3.8 billion years (Bethea, 2011). Water is known as H2O, meaning each water molecule consists of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom (Bethea, 2011). Water molecules are in a constant state of movement and are present as a “solid, liquid, and gas” (Bethea, 2011, p. 18). Water in all forms is continually moving and recycling through the processes of the water cycle (or hydrologic cycle); evaporating from the oceans, water bodies, and plant vegetation into the atmosphere, then condensing before falling as precipitation to the land and back into the oceans (Rickard, Spenceley, & Linstead, 2011) (See Figure 1.4). Globally, evaporation is almost equal to precipitation and this means the amount of water on Earth is fixed (National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA], n.d.).
The burden of contaminated drinking water disproportionately affects low-income settings. These areas may lack the finances to implement and maintain basic water treatment plants or lack a stable government to implement such measures (Coussens, 2009). As a result, 1 in 10 people lack access to safe drinking water (WHO, 2015).
Soil makes up the outermost layer of our planet. On average, most soil is approximately 1 meter thick. But, where does soil come from? Soil undergoes different processes in order to become, well, “dirt.”
The conditions on early Earth, when dated back to 4 billion years, are very different now. Keeping in view the “Big Bang Theory” the conditions were very extreme in the terms of temperature. Consequently, the earth was extremely hot, causing the evaporation of liquid into the atmosphere. Gradually, as the earth cooled, the water vapors in the atmosphere condensed and fell as rain. They did not boil away but remained in pools that eventually converted into lakes and oceans.
Soil is very important and takes very long to form. Soil is needed for all crops. We would not have food, wood, or many other things without soil. It is crucial for humans to protect our soil.
There are three main different states of matter that water can go through. Those are solid, liquid and gas. The changing of water naturally in this process is called the hydraulic cycle. The hydraulic cycle functions when heat is either put in or out of the system. The start of the hydraulic cycle, on an overall picture, is when surface water is evaporated. That means that the water is put under heat, and changed from a liquid to a gas (Department of Atmospheric Sciences & University of Illinois at Urbana Campaign, 2010). Then the wat...