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Water Water...Everywhere!

Most of us have grown up thinking little of water limits. Whether from a well, or a tap, it seemed to be everlasting, and cheap.

After all, 3/4 of the surface of the earth is covered by the stuff. Oceans are up to seven miles deep, and thousands of miles across. All told, the earth contains 321 million cubic miles of water. It has been used, discarded, naturally purified, and used again---like liquid in a sealed "closed system" terrarium. For millions of years, life on earth has used the same water over and over. Little has been added, or lost. So the water you drank a few moments ago might well have been used at one time by.........let's not think about it!

We all know that water is critically essential for life to exist. Most of what we drink, and much of what we eat is water. In fact, the average adult is 70% water. Without it we, and all other life on earth would cease to exist. Ice caps have been recently photographed on Mars, giving thought to the possibility that life once existed there, or in some form may still be there. Water and life are inseparably bound up together.

Water is continually moving around, through, and above the Earth as water vapor, liquid water, and ice. This water cycle is truly a "cycle," there is no beginning or end.

 

There is a theory that much of Earth's water originally came from comets hitting the planet over billions of years. But in the last hundreds of millions of years, the cycle displayed in the chart above has remained fairly constant.

So what's the Problem?

With all of this water, why do we need to be concerned? There are multiple reasons.

Populations are increasing. In 1950 the earth supported between 2 and 3 billion of us. Now it is nearly 7 billion and growing rapidly.

With increased population comes increasing demand, increasing pollution. Twentieth century industrialization, and now third-world twenty-first century development and industrialization, have placed additional stress on our water supplies. So the heart of the matter is this: there is rapidly increasing demand for water,  and a smaller supply of clean water to satisfy the world's thirst.

In addition, water is not always where it is needed. Droughts have appeared in the mist of population centers, and have resulted in deaths, or displacement of whole populations. Ask those caught in the shifting sands of Africa. Many feel that global warming will result in unpredictable weather patterns, drought among them. Today, the Western U.S. has grown beyond it's ability to provide adequate supplies of fresh water. Much of the West has experienced multi-year shortfalls in precipitation, placing an intolerable strain on the Colorado River. In 2008 reservoirs were drying up in much of the Southeastern U.S. In March 2009, we saw a TV reporter standing on dry land within a Texas reservoir. He stated that last year the water would have been ten feet over his head. American cities are fighting over who has the right to pump from rivers or underground aquifers. The problem is already here, and now.

 

Not all Water is Fresh or Available

Of all the water on the earth, humans can use only about one percent of this water. Such usable water is found in groundwater aquifers, rivers, and freshwater lakes. Where is Earth's water located, and in what forms does it exist? You can see how water is distributed by viewing these bar charts. The left-side bar shows where the water on Earth exists; about 97 percent of all water is in the oceans. The middle bar shows the distribution of that three percent of all Earth's water that is freshwater. The majority, about 69 percent, is locked up in glaciers and icecaps, mainly in Greenland and Antarctica. You might be surprised that of the remaining freshwater, almost all of it is below your feet, as ground water. No matter where on Earth you are standing, chances are that, at some depth, the ground below you is saturated with water. Of all the freshwater on Earth, only about 0.3 percent is contained in rivers and lakes—yet rivers and lakes are not only the water we are most familiar with, it is also where most of the water we use in our everyday lives exists.

How much of Earth's water is available for our uses ... and in what forms does it exist? You can best see how water is distributed by viewing these pie charts:

The top pie chart shows that over 99 percent of all water (oceans, seas, ice, most saline water, and atmospheric water) is not available for our uses. And even of the remaining fraction of one percent (the small brown slice in the top pie chart), much of that is out of reach. Considering that most of the water we use in everyday life comes from rivers (the small dark blue slice in the bottom pie chart), you'll see we generally only make use of a tiny portion of the available water supplies. The bottom pie shows that the vast majority of the fresh water available for our uses is stored in the ground (the large grey slice in the second pie chart).

For a detailed explanation of where Earth's water is, look at the data table below. Notice how of the world's total water supply of about 332.5 million cubic miles (1,386 million cubic kilometers) of water, over 96 percent is saline. And, of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers. Another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground. Thus, surface-water sources (such as rivers) only constitute about 22,300 cubic miles (93,100 cubic kilometers), which is about 0.0067 percent of total water, yet rivers are the source of most of the water people use.