Chapter 4: Water (part 1) Flashcards
(25 cards)
What are the facts about water?
- oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface
- oceans and seas contain 97% of all earth’s water
- only 3% of the water on earth is fresh water
- nearly 65% of 3% of this fresh water is in the “deep freeze” in the ice sheets
one of the places water is supplied are aquifers
there are water stored in porous rocks under the ground
the second place is wells
these are holes bored or dug into rock to reach the water stored in them
thirdly, surface water
water in lakes, rivers and swamps
the fourth place is reservoirs
an artificial lake, usually created behind a damn or by the side of a river.
what is a service reservoir?
a reservoir where portable water is stored
what is desalination?
the removal of salt from seawater
mention the two forms of desalination
distilation and reverse osmosis
what is distilation?
when the water is boiled and turns to water vapour leaving the salt behind, then the vapour is then condensed and turns to liquid water that can be used (causes pollution and 10-30% efficient)
what is reverse osmosis
pumping of water at high pressure through a fine membrane (30-50% efficient and requires lesser energy)
Mention the three types of water usage
Domestic
Agricultural
Industrial
What is/explain domestic use
Domestic use could be various things: at home for drinking and cooking (3%), washing and flushing the toilet (50%), washing clothes (20%), gardening, washing cars, water lost in leaks (which is all 2.3%), dishwasher (1.4%), bath (1.7%), faucet (15.7%)
What is/explain industrial use
water that is used in factories for cooling machines, mixing and making products such as dyes and paints, bottling and canning food and drinks and power generation
What is/explain agricultural use
used mainly for irrigation, because plants need water for transporting minerals and photosynthesis, and also for domestic animals
What is drinking water?
Drinking water, also known as portable water is basically water that is safe to drink or to use for food preperation or other uses
There are two types of countries according to water availability
Water rich countries
Water poor countries
what are water rich countries:
countries with plentiful freshwater supplies like South America, Carribean, North America. Or countries that have plenty of land for rain to fall on like Russia, Canada, China, with one of the greatest rivers e.g Amazon
what are water poor countries
countries with scarce fresh water supplies like middle east, asia, north africa - they are mainly desert countries
why does the world have water rich and poor countries
due to uneven distrubution, the world has water rich countries and water poor countries - so some countries experience physical or economic water shortages, while some do not suffer
What is water conflict
conflict between countries,states or groups over an access to water resources
there are two types of water scaricty:
physical and economic
what is physical water scarcity?
when there is not enough water to meet both human demands and for ecosystems to fuction because of low rainfall or high level of evaporation, so arid regions suffer from this, also where water seems abundant but resources are over committed
what is economic water scarcity
this is caused by a lack of investment in water infastructure or insufficient human capacity to satisfy the demand of water or the country cannot afford to use and adequate source of water
why do urban areas have higher access to safe drinking water
because…
- they are more wealthy places with factories and offices
- people’s incomes are higher
- easier to put pressure on leader’s to make improvement
-wealthy people are more likely to live in cities
-water pipes are easier and cheaper to build when a lot of people are close together
