Читать книгу Introduction to Desalination - Louis Theodore - Страница 13

The water on the surface of the Earth can be found in eight distinct compartments which are shown in Table 1.1 along with how much of the Earth’s total water budget each makes up. These eight compartments are more commonly organized into three distinct groupings. First, there is surface water, which includes oceans, lakes, rivers, seas, etc. In short, surface water is all forms of liquid water that lie on the surface of the Earth. The second grouping is glacial and frozen water. These are resources that are located on the surface; however, these resources are in frozen, long-term storage. Long-term storage is defined as water that has historically taken thousands of years to move through the water cycle. The third and final grouping is groundwater. This is the water that is found below the surface of the Earth in conditions where the percent saturation in soil pore water is 100% (Mullen 2021). The process known as the hydrologic, or water cycle, has played a crucial role in the formation and distribution of all water resources on Earth today. The water cycle is used to describe the constant circulation of water through its three phases of solid, liquid, and gas as it moves within the eight compartments making up the water resource pool on the Earth.

Table 1.1 Breakdown of the total water budget on the Earth.