60+ Surface Water Facts That Are Wonderful

Did you know that water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere?

It plays a very important role in regulating our planet's temperature. Groundwater is considered to be a critical water source for many people around the world.

Groundwater provides water for drinking, irrigation, and other needs. Here we discuss some fascinating facts about surface water.

Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere, accounting for about 60% of the total atmospheric greenhouse effect. Without water vapor, the Earth would nothing more than a frozen desert. Vaporization from the oceans is the primary source of water vapor in the atmosphere.

Condensation of water vapor is the primary mechanism by which water is returned to the Earth's surface (71% of the earth is water). Groundwater is water that has percolated down through the soil and bedrock to the water table.

Groundwater is considered to be a critical water source for many people around the world. Aquifers are geological formations that contain water. Springs are water sources where water flows naturally to the surface from an aquifer.

Rivers are flowing bodies of water that empty into oceans, lake, or other rivers. Wetlands are areas where water covers the ground or where water is close to the surface.

The water cycle includes a less discussed problem - water contamination. During runoff, or overland flow of water, contamination happens and isolating these chemicals can be quite difficult and a hassle. Precipitation happens at different rates in different places. During precipitation, stripping vegetation, any pesticides or fertilizers that are present add to the runoff or into the water bodies.

What is surface water?

Any water bodies on top of the Earth's surface are considered surface water, you can refer these to blue water.

The water has high usage for terrestrial work. Sometimes small water bodies are created by storing precipitation or runoff from elevated places.

In the beginning of spring, the temperature starts to increase and this cause the snow to melt.

The melted snow outpours the nearest streams and rivers, which cover a large portion of human drinking water.

Global warming and climate change cause evaporation, which is lessening the water surface.

In fact, water sometimes transmits into ground, and becomes ground water.

Irrigation, hydropower, livestock, industrial work, and wastewater treatment require surface water.

Environmental Protection Agency has mentioned 68% of the water that communities used, is surface water.

According to USGS if the Earth's surface water has under 0.1 lb/gal (1000 mg/l) of dissolved solids, it can be used as freshwater.

Environmental science defines three major variations, perennial or permanent, ephemeral or semi-permanent and man-made surface water.

Perennial or permanent surface water covers the ocean, river or wetlands and they are mostly accessible year around.

Ephemeral or semi-permanent surface water are accessible certain times of the year and the sources are dry channels like creeks or lagoons and waterholes.

Man made surface water is accommodated by humans with certain infrastructures.

Some of them are canals, swamps, dammed artificial water surface supply and artificial garden ponds.

With the help of dams Earth's surface water is stored and later it is utilized to generate hydropower for renewable energy.

Sources of Surface Water

Most of the water stored in the Earth is either not accessible or not apt for human usage. It is may be 1% of total water on what every living being rely.

Any water that can be drinkable is from inland surface water sources and ground water sources.

The water sources are maintained by precipitation or snowmelt.

Sea water, nearly 97% of the total water lies in the oceans.

The ocean water is not ergonomic because of the high concentration (3.5%) of salts.

People in the places with only sea water have no choice but to desalt or demineralize the only water.

Rain water what is left after evaporation or infiltration comes to the ocean as streams or rivers.

Although the purity of the water from these stream or river are relatively very inferior than water table, lakes and impounded reservoirs.

Lakes work as natural reservoirs that holds fresh water year around. Ponds work same as lakes, they are just small in size.

Ponds can be used for temporary purposes.

These stored minor fresh water supply is relatively more accessible than groundwater or glaciers (can be a source of most of earth's freshwater).

The quality of the water from these types of water sources are superior to streams and rivers.

Artificial Impounding Reservoirs, these are man made with hydraulic structures over river valleys.

These dams are easier to make on the deeper and nar­rower valley and they also help in flood control at flood plains.

Even here the water is relatively less inferior than direct streams and rivers.

For agricultural, domes­tic and industrial usage people make inland surface water sources.

They are easily accessible but they cause environmental degradation because of the disposal of sewage and industrial effluents.

Uses of Surface Water

To make land surface water apt for drinking purpose includes many quality factors. The quality may vary from one situation to the next but before it replaces the drinking water, it has to be tested properly.

In these water sources there will always be microbial contamination or the presence of algae or other pollutants like motor oil.

Thus, it is recommended to use the water for substandard purposes like flushing toilets or watering the garden.

One good thing is that to use these water sources you do not need to install a separate reservoir.

In the United States, surface water is heavily used for drinking and other public uses.

The public uses include public supply, irrigation, mining, and industrial purposes.

But a large amount of surface water is used by the thermoelectric-power industry to cool electricity-generating equipment.

In 2015, 74% of the total water that the people of United States had used were from surface-water sources.

Keep in mind this 74% refers to 237,000 million gal (897,142 million l) per dayout of total of 322,000 million gal (1,463,840 million l) per day.

Fun Facts About Surface Water

On Earth, climate change has made it worse for environment, the meltdown of ocean ice and glaciers cause the increment in ocean levels.

The increment in salt water causes infiltration to freshwater aquifers and it pollutes the water that is used in urban domestic or commercial and agricultural services.

The whole situation affects inhabiting wildlife.

During 2012-2016 NOAA mentioned that 544 trillion lb (247 billion t) of Greenland ice-sheets and Antarctic had been lessened per year.

Hydrologic cycle is related to global warming. Because of this, evaporation started increasing but precipitation, runoff and soil moisture is in decline.

These factors have disbalanced the surface water levels.

The surface water quality varies upon chemical inputs from the surrounding elements, which are mostly contaminated by human activity.

Environmental science have shown hydromodifications can cause impoundments, which may change the river or stream flows and this cause changes in drainage patterns.

Precipitation amount, timing and condition regulate the evaporation rates.

The physical characteristics of surface water are temperature, clarity and chemical characteristics are contaminants, salinity and nutrients.

There are some diseases and pathogens submerged as biological characteristics.

Eutrophication happens with excessive plant and algal growth.

The process accelerates nitrogen and phosphorus discharge by increased agricultural and industrial human activity.

University of Alberta accommodated a survey, named State of the World's lakes in 2008 and here they manifested that 28% stream of Africa, 48% of North America, 54% of Asian Lakes, 41% of South America and 53% of Europe's surface water is eutrophication affected.

With agricultural practices and huge fertilizer usage there is a time when ground can not assimilate the nutrients and then it transmits through rain into river.

Even many industrial or domestically discharged wastewater also affects the surface water.

With the accumulation of pollutants like organic material and human garbage in liquid water in stream channels and waterbodies near coastal regions, resuspension of nutrients in the surface water happen.

In surface water organic materials refer to hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, magnesium, sodium, zinc, and copper.

The vegetation of aquatic plants depends on inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus. Now this excessive vegetation can decrease the oxygen level but dissolving, which is not apt for aquatic species.

Basically on Earth groundwater and surface lies overlapping on one another. The exchange of water and chemicals represent hydrologic cycle.

Groundwater can be stored from days to even millennia and surface water transmits organic materials to the underlying aquifer.

After a certain time the ground-water cycle dispatch in the land surfaces but the amount of time it was stored and the geochemical conditions defines the quality.

USGS Integrated Watershed Studies tried to manifest the alterations of the chemical quality in water cycle. The changes can vary upon climate, land use, or management practices.

USGS measured the water surface flows and tries to find new ways to know the hydrologic cycle on Earth and develop watershed models by using high-frequency water-quality monitoring data.