Water pollution also reduces the availability of fresh water.
Locally, however, if more fresh water is consumed through human activities than is naturally restored, this may result in reduced fresh water availability (or water scarcity) from surface and underground sources and can cause serious damage to surrounding and associated environments. Fresh water is replenished through the process of the natural water cycle, in which water from seas, lakes, forests, land, rivers and reservoirs evaporates, forms clouds, and returns inland as precipitation. įresh water is a renewable and variable, but finite natural resource. Agriculture uses roughly two thirds of all fresh water extracted from the environment. Just 3% of it is extracted for human consumption. Fresh water makes up less than 3% of the world's water resources, and just 1% of that is readily available. Fresh water can easily become polluted by human activities or due to naturally occurring processes, such as erosion. Much of the earth's fresh water (on the surface and groundwater) is to a substantial degree unsuitable for human consumption without some treatment. Many organisms can thrive on salt water, but the great majority of higher plants and most insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds need fresh water to survive.įresh water is not always potable water, that is, water safe to drink by humans. Water is critical to the survival of all living organisms. Fresh water is the water resource that is of the most and immediate use to humans. Fresh water may encompass frozen and meltwater in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, snowfields and icebergs, natural precipitations such as rainfall, snowfall, hail/ sleet and graupel, and surface runoffs that form inland bodies of water such as wetlands, ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, as well as groundwater contained in aquifers, subterranean rivers and lakes. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include non-salty mineral-rich waters such as chalybeate springs. Rivers, lakes, and marshlands, such as (from top) South America's Amazon River, Russia's Lake Baikal, and the Everglades in Florida of The United States, are types of freshwater systems.įresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids.
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