Water Resources Essay Research Paper Water is — страница 2

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carbohydrates, fats, proteins and, salts. Blood in animals, and sap in plants also largely consists of water, and transports food, and remove waste material around the body or plant. Water also plays a key role in the breakdown of molecules such as proteins and carbohydrates. This process is called hydrolysis and goes on continually in living cells. Finally, water is of such importance because of its large involved in the earth s mechanics. The water cycle is a series of movements of water above, on, and below the surface of the earth. (Microsoft Encarta, 2000) The water cycle consists of four stages that are storage, evaporation, precipitation, and runoff. In these stages, the water of the world is more or less recycled. The storage stage is simply the storage of fresh water in

the groundwater reservoirs, glaciers and, the polar ice caps. These sources are all composed of fresh water, or drinkable water. However, these sources are not in abundance, in fact they only are responsible for 3 percent of the worlds water. The other 97 percent of the worlds water is housed in our oceans and seas that is too salty to drink. In the evaporation stage water is changed from its liquid or solid state to a gas and taken into the atmosphere. This is vital to the survival of the earth because if the water that is falling on the earth in precipitation was not replenished the atmosphere would eventually dry out. The rate that water is evaporated is controlled by temperature, sunlight intensity, wind speed, plant cover, ground moisture and, humidity. In this evaporation

stage some of the salt water from the oceans is utilized because when it evaporates it become relatively salt free and can be put onto the earth as fresh water in the precipitation stage. The precipitation stage occurs when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses into clouds and falls to the earth. Precipitation can take a variety of forms, including rain, snow, ice pellets, and hail. Finally, the runoff stage is where water that was fallen on the earth from the precipitation stage runs off of the ground and into lakes, rivers, oceans or any other mass of water. The water cycle is also responsible for the movement of elements and, nutrients around the earth just like in animals and, plants. The pollution of our fresh water resources is an environmental disaster that will affect

humans greatly. Inside the boundaries of Canada, we hold approximately 9 percent of the world s renewable freshwater supply and 20 percent of the world s total freshwater resources, including waters captured in glaciers and the polar ice caps (Environment Canada, 1996), and possess more lakes and inland waters than any other country in the world (Microsoft Encarta, 2000), meaning that we, as a nation, are being targeted to sell our water to the rest of the world. The scary thing about this is that under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada s resources, including water, can be bought by U.S. companies to be sold to the rest of the world. Our water, in Canada, however will not be of any use to anyone in the world though if it

continues to be polluted. Water pollution is the contamination of our rivers, lakes, oceans and groundwater through industrial and private activities. The most common forms of water pollution are the dumping of toxic chemicals, radioactive waste and petroleum products by large factories and oil spills, the dumping of sewage and human and animal wastes back into our water and the excess of fertilizers by commercial and private farmers and citizens. Also dumping of such things as garbage and debris into water is another form of water pollution that simply degrades the aesthetic appeal of water. Water pollution is such a large problem because most of the chemicals that are in things like sewage and fertilizers cannot be easily broken down by nature if they can be broken down at all.

For, example some industrial wastes like sewage and fertilizers can be more easily broken down by nature because these compounds can be broken down by chemical reactions or by natural bacteria into simple, non-polluting substances such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen. However, other problems arise from the creation of these substances like eutrophication. Eutrophication is the progressive over fertilization of water, in which festering masses of algae bloom, choking rivers and lakes. When chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus (the main components of fertilizer and human waste when broken down) are introduced in increased amounts by dumping, they have a cascading effect on the ecosystem that lives underwater. Phytoplankton multiply explosively with the increased amount of