HYDROSPHERE

Contents
• Water: a unique solvent and a vital resource
• Composition of Hydrosphere
• Water Cycle
• Human Impacts on Hydrological Cycle
• Human Use of Water
Earth’s Water Supply
• Water covers 71% of Earth’s surface.
• About 97.5% of this volume is the salt water of the
oceans and seas.
• The remaining 2.5% is fresh water with a salt content
of less than 0.1%. This is the water upon which most
terrestrial biota, ecosystems, and humans depend.
• Of this 2.5%, more than two-thirds (87%) is bound up
in the polar ice caps and glaciers.
• Thus, only 0.77% of total earth water is found in
lakes, wetlands, rivers, groundwater, biota, soil, and
the atmosphere
The easily accessible water in lakes, rivers and
streams represents only 3% of all liquid fresh
water, which is 13 percent of all fresh water, which
is 2.4 percent of all water.

Soil Moisture (2%)

Oceans and Ice and Snow
Saline Lakes (87%) Ground
(97.5%)
Water
(95%)
Fresh Water Liquid Water
Lakes &
(2.5%) (13%)
Rivers (3%)
• Streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, swamps, estuaries,
groundwater, oceans, and the atmosphere all contain
water.
• They provide
• drinking water,
• water for industries
• to irrigate crops.
• hydroelectric power
• transportation,
• recreation,
• waste processing,
• habitats for aquatic plants and animals.
• modulate the climate through evaporation
+ Points
• We have built dams, canals, reservoirs, sewer
systems, treatment plants, water towers,
irrigation systems, and desalination plants.
• Waterborne diseases have been brought under
control,
• Vast cities thrive in deserts.
• Irrigation makes it possible to grow 40% of the
world’s food, and
• one-fifth of all electricity is generated through
hydropower.
 On the other hand . . .
• Over 1 billion people still lack access to clean drinking water,
• 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation
• Over 3 million deaths each year are traced to waterborne
diseases.
• Because of the infrastructure that is used to control water:
• water bodies are being lost,
• rivers are running dry,
• tens of million people have been displaced to make room for
reservoirs,
• groundwater resources are being depleted,
• and disputes over water have raised tensions from local to
international levels.
Composition of Hydrosphere
• The hydrosphere is composed of all of the water on or
near the earth. This includes the oceans, rivers, lakes,
and even the moisture in the air. The distribution of water
often is described in terms of interacting compartments
in which water resides for short or long times.

Compartment % Total Water Average Residence Time

Ocean 97.6 3,000 to 30,000 Years
Ice & Snow 2.07 1 to 16,000 years
Ground Water down to 1 km 0.28 Days to Thousands of Years
Lakes & Reservoirs 0.009 1 to 100 Years
Rivers & Streams 0.0001 10 to 30 Days
Other Resources include:
• In addition to the water resources enlisted in the
previous slide, other significant compartments includes:
• Biological moisture in plants and animals, which
together compose approximately 0.005% of the total
earth’s water and has a residence time of about 1
week.
• Other significant segments include the water bound
as soil moisture and as water vapors in the
atmosphere with their respective percentages 0.005%
and 0.001%.
Oceans
• Together the oceans contain more than 97 percent of
all the liquid water in the world. Oceans are too salty
for most human uses, but they contain 90% of the
world’s living biomass.
• The average residence time of water in the ocean is
about 3000 years. In the deepest ocean trenches,
movement is almost non-existent and water may
remain undisturbed for tens of thousands of years.
• The average residence time of water in the ocean is
the length of time that an individual molecule spends
circulating in the ocean before it evaporates and
becomes a part of the hydrological cycle again.
Glaciers, Ice and Snow
• About 2.4 percent of all water that is fresh, nearly
87% is tied up in glaciers, ice caps and snowfields.
• There are two main types of glaciers: alpine glaciers,
which are found in mountain terrains, and
continental glaciers, which can cover larger areas as
enormous masses of ice that not visibly affected by
the landscape and covering the entire surface
beneath them.
• Antarctica and Greenland are the only places where
continental ice sheets currently exist. These regions
contain vast quantities of fresh water. The volume of
ice is so large that if the Greenland ice sheet melted,
it would cause sea levels to rise some six meters all
around the world. If the Antarctic ice sheet melted,
sea levels would rise up to 65 meters (210 feet).
• The glaciers are the primary fresh water resource on
the earth. They feed the streams and the rivers with
adequate amounts of water that is used up mainly
for irrigation purposes.
• Glaciers are highly sensitive to minor changes in the
atmospheric temperatures. They are therefore
considered good indicator to earth’s climate.
Groundwater (down to 1km)
• Ground water is the part of precipitation that seeps
down through the soil until it reaches rock material
that is saturated with water. Water in the ground is
stored in the spaces between rock particles.
• Percolation
• Infiltration
• Zone of Aeration
• Zone for Saturation
• Water Table
• The seepage of rain water into the soil is known as
percolation.
• The inward movement through permeable rocks is a
process called infiltration.
• The upper layers of soil hold both air and water and
make up the zone of aeration. Moisture for plant growth
comes mainly from these layers.
• The depth of the zone of aeration, however, varies
depending on the amount of rainfall received, soil type
and surface topography.
• The deeper soil layers where all spaces are filled with
water and almost no air make up the zone of
saturation.
• The top of this zone is the water table.
Lakes, Ponds and Reservoirs
• A lake is an inland depression that holds standing fresh
water round the year. Maximum lake depths range from
a few meters to over 1600m (Lake Baikal in Siberia).
• Ponds are generally considered to be small temporary
bodies of water shallow enough for rooted plants to grow
over most of the bottom. Both lakes and ponds are
relatively temporary features on the land because they
are eventually filled with silt or are emptied by cutting out
an outlet to consume water.
• Reservoirs are lakes created artificially to meet specific
needs such as provision of water for domestic use,
irrigation, industrial use, hydroelectricity production, flood
control and for recreation.
Rivers and streams
• Small rivulets accumulate to form streams, and
streams join to form rivers.
• The speed at which a river flows is not a very good
measure how much water it carries.
• The best measure of the volume carried by a river is
its discharge, the amount of water that passes a
fixed point in a given amount of time. This is usually
expressed as liters cubic feet of water per second.
Can You name the 5 Rivers of Pakistan??
Hydrological Cycle
• The hydrological cycle describes the circulation of water as:
• it evaporates from land, water (evaporation) and organisms
specially plants (transpiration);
• enters the atmosphere; and is precipitated back (rainfall) to
the earth’s surface;
• then moves underground by percolation or
• over the surface by run off into rivers, lakes and sea
(overland flow) from where it is evaporated once again.
• The precipitation water that moves in to the earth surface
continues its downward motion through a process called
infiltration. It finally reaches the water table and recharges
the ground water reserves.
• Plants absorb ground water and pump it into the air through
a process called evapo-transpiration
In the Hydrological Cycle water moves constantly
between aquatic, atmospheric and terrestrial
compartments, driven by solar energy and gravity.

Transpiration

Infiltration

Precipitation

Unsaturated Evaporation

Saturated
Percolation Stream
Water Table
Ground Water
• Absolute and Relative Humidity
Human impacts or hydrological cycle
• Changes to Earth’s Surface
• In most natural ecosystem, precipitation recharges
the ground water reservoirs. In addition dirt, detritus
and micro-organisms are filtered out as the water
percolates through soil and pervious rock, making
ground water drinkable.
• Human beings keep on cutting the forests to clear the
land for urbanization or agricultural use. As forests
are cleared, water infiltration decrease, where as, the
runoff increases, consequently, less evapo-
transpiration and ground water recharge is observed
resulting decreased local rainfall.
• Climate change
• Earth climate is warming because of the rise in green
houses gases.
• An increase in global temperature increases evapo-
transpiration hence making the drought prone regions
drier.
• On the other hand, the regions with sufficient forest
cover and high precipitation will experience increased
rainfall.
• Global warming tends to make dry regions drier and
the wet region of the globe, wetter.
• Atmospheric pollution
• The suspended particles in the atmosphere forming a
brownish haze especially in the industrial area are called
aerosols. The aerosol particles support the formation of
clouds but suppress rainfall. With suppressed rainfall comes
drier conditions so more dust and smoke are the result.
However, unlike the accumulation of green houses gases,
the aerosol impact is more local.
• Withdrawal for human use
• Human consumption of surface and ground water
resources in increasing day by day since the resource
recharge is not on a similar rate, an overall depletion of
water resources has taken place.
Human Use of Water
• Water-Rich and Water-Poor Countries
• Types of Water Use
• Quantities of Water Used
• Use by Sector
Water-Rich and Water-Poor Countries
• South America, West Central Africa, and South and
Southeast Asia all have areas of very high rainfall. Brazil,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Canada and Russia
because they have high precipitation levels and large
land areas, are among the most water-rich countries on
earth.
• In contrast, Kuwait, where temperatures are extremely
high and rain almost never falls, almost all of Kuwait’s
water comes from imports and desalinized seawater.
• Countries with moderate resources use Water
Management Techniques to fulfill the requirements. E.g.
Sahel Regions of Africa
Types of Water Use
• Withdrawal is the total amount of water taken from a
lake, river, or aquifer for any purpose.
• Consumption is the fraction of withdrawn water that is
lost in transmission, evaporation, absorption, chemical
transformation, or otherwise made unavailable for other
purposes as a result of human use.
• Degradation is a change in water quality due to
contamination or pollution so that it is unsuitable for
other desirable services. The total quantity available may
remain constant after some uses, but the quality is
degraded so the water is no longer as valuable as it was.
 Quantities of Water Used
• Those countries with a plentiful water supply and a
small population withdraw a very small percentage
of the water available to them. Canada, Brazil, and
the Congo, for instance, withdraw less than 1
percent of their annual renewable supply.
• By contrast, in countries such as Libya and Israel,
where water is one of the most crucial environmental
resources, water withdrawal amount to more than
100% of their renewable supply. They are essentially
extracting groundwater faster than it is being
replenished.
Agricultural Use
• Agriculture claims about 69 percent of total water
withdrawal, ranging from 93 percent of all water
used in India to only 4 percent in Kuwait. Canada,
where the fields are well watered by natural
precipitation, uses only 12 percent of its water for
agriculture.
• In many developing countries, agricultural water use
is notoriously inefficient and highly consumptive.
• High evaporation and seepage through unlined
canals
• The run off water is quite contaminated
• Use of Sprinklers and Drip Irrigation can always be
effective methods
Sprinklers

Drip
Irrigation
Industrial Use
• Industry accounts for about one-fourth of all water
use, ranging from 70 percent of withdrawal in some
European countries, such as Germany, to 5 percent
in less industrialized countries, such as Egypt and
India…
• Cooling water for power plants is by far the largest
single industrial use of water.
• Although cooling water usually is not chemically
contaminated, warm water can be thermal pollution
if dumped directly into a stream or lake.
Kala Bagh Dam Yes or No?
 Kala Bagh Dam…..the + points!
• Bashir A. Malik, former chief technical advisor of the United
Nations and World Bank, has said "Sindh and
Pakhtunkhwah would become drought areas in the years to
come, if Kalabagh Dam was not built.”
• At the same time former KPK Chief Minister Shamsul Mulk
has stated that the "Kalabagh Dam would be helpful in
erasing poverty from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as it would
irrigate 800,000 acres of cultivable land that is located 100-
150 feet above the level of River Indus.”
• Kalabagh Dam would provide 6.5 million acre feet of water
to cultivate seven million acres of currently barren land.
• This is in addition to 3,800 MW of electricity it would provide
Opposition Social, environmental or political??
• The coastal regions of Sindh require a constant flow of
water down the Indus into the Arabian Sea so that the
flowing water can keep the seawater from intruding
inland. Such seawater intrusion would literally turn vast
areas of Sindh's coast into an arid saline desert, and
destroy Sindh's coastal mangroves.
• Claims that the current flow of Indus river downstream of
Kotri Barrage is only because of rain. Hence in years of
low rain, Sindh fears the Indus would stop flowing.
• With the construction of dams, such as Mangla Dam and
Tarbela Dam across the Indus, Sindhis have seen the once-
mighty Indus has weakened downstream of the Kotri
Barrage up to Hyderabad.
• They fear that there simply is not enough water for another
large dam across the Indus.
• Sindhis claim that their share of the Indus water will be
curtailed as water from the Kalabagh will go to irrigate
farmlands in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, at their cost.
• Sindhis hold that their rights as the lower riparian have
precedence according to international water distribution law.
Domestic Use of Water
 ACTIVITY . . . .

Suggest 5 Methods to Avoid Water

Wastage at Household Level
THANK YOU