Fresh water of the Continents - Essay Example

The rest of water of Earth constitutes the Earth’s fresh water resource (Strahler & Zeeya ch. 11). Typically, fresh water is described as water with a salinity of less than 1% that of oceans. Water with salinity within this level is typically denoted as marginal water because it is a fringe for many uses by living things. The ratio of fresh water to salt water on Earth is approximately 1 to 40. As said, only a small portion of Earth water exists as fresh water (about 2.5%), and even a lesser fraction is available to mankind.

Of this percentage, almost three quarters is frozen, and most of the rest is available as soil moisture or located deep in the surface. In the present world, the major sources of fresh water that is accessible to mankind reside in shallow groundwater aquifers, lakes, wetlands, and rivers, all of which constitute to a small fraction of (equivalent to tenths of 1%) of the total volume of Earth’s water. This volume of water is regularly recycled through rainfall and snowfall, thus available on a sustainable basis (Strahler & Zeeya ch. 11). However, global averages fail to demonstrate a complete image of the world’s water base. . Some zone of the world portrays the wide range of sustainable water resources, which varies from significantly zero in many arid and semi-arid regions to thousands of cubic kilometers per annual as chief river corridor flow.

Such zonal dissimilarities in the quantity of available fresh water postulate the diverse patterns of water resources across the world (Strahler & Zeeya ch. 11). Fresh water supply is habituated by several additional impacts, which intensify the patterns of abundance and scarcity. These impacts involve the distribution of mankind relative to the supply of water, availability of water engineering to stabilize flows, patterns of demand, water quality, and interannual climate variations and seasonal.

These factors are discussed in detail in the following paragraphs. Water scarcity is the foremost factor to be considered when establishing the availability of fresh water on the earth. The research has far shown a growing dependence of mankind society on available freshwater resources. To assess these provisioning services more deeply, the supply of recycled water must be put into context of interactions with individuals and their use of water (Strahler & Zeeya ch. 11). Approximately one-third of the planet population resides in nations suffering from moderate to high water stress.

In such countries, water consumption is more than ten 10% of recyclable water resources. There are three main factors causing increasing water demand, which involves industrial development, population growth, and agricultural. Agriculture has accounted for most fresh water extractions in developing economies in the past two decades. Researchers have often assumed that growing demand of