Water Cycle
Freshwater Sources
Water Availability
Conservation & Management
Water Pollution
100
This process releases water vapor from plant leaves.
What is transpiration?
100
An underground layer of rock or sediment that stores and allows the movement of water.
What is an aquifer?
100
A measure of how safe water is for a particular use.
What is water quality?
100
The process of removing salt from water.
What is desalination?
100
Pollution that comes from one specific source.
What is point source pollution?
200
This process changes liquid water into water vapor.
What is evaporation?
200
The area where water naturally enters an aquifer.
What is a recharge zone?
200
This type of water scarcity occurs where there is simply not enough water available to meet demands.
What is physical water scarcity?
200
The process of accumulating and storing rainwater for later use.
What is water harvesting?
200
This occurs when industries release warm water and raise the temperature of a body of water.
What is thermal pollution?
300
This process changes water vapor back into liquid water.
What is condensation?
300
An area of land where all runoff drains into the same body of water.
What is a watershed?
300
This type of scarcity is caused by a lack of money and infrastructure to access water.
What is economic water scarcity?
300
The process of removing contaminants from wastewater and household water.
What is water treatment?
300
The increasing concentration of toxins as they move up the food chain.
What is biomagnification?
400
Water is naturally purified during these two parts of the water cycle.
What are evaporation and condensation?
400
This type of water forms where a river (freshwater) meets the ocean (saltwater).
What is brackish water?
400
Developing countries use most of their water for this purpose.
What is agriculture?
400
This type of desalination mimics Earth's natural water cycle by heating water and collecting the vapor.
What is thermal desalination?
400
The picture below is an example of this phenomenon.
What is artificial eutrophication?
500
The separation of water from particles and dissolved substances such as salt is called this.
What is purification?
500
This method helps refill aquifers by collecting and storing rainwater.
What is water harvesting?
500
From the 1950s to now, this has increased faster than the world's population.
What is water use/consumption?
500
Water extraction represents the amount of water that is being taken from a surface water or groundwater source. Water consumption is the amount of water that is used by residential, industrial, or agricultural uses.
Looking at the graph for agriculture, this is how much water extraction is expected to increase from 1925 to 2000.
What is ~1600 cubic km/year?
500
Burning coal results in toxic mercury emissions which enter aquatic ecosystems. Organisms lower in the food chain have less mercury concentrations than those at the top of the food chain.
This is an example of this phenomenon.
What is biomagnification?