Water plays an exceptional role in maintaining the life of any organism. This substance can be represented in three states of aggregation: solid, liquid and gaseous. But it is the liquid that is the main internal environment of the human body and other organisms, because. all biochemical reactions take place here, and it is in it that all cell structures are located.
What percentage is water on earth?
According to some estimates, about 71% of the entire surface of the Earth is water. It is represented by oceans, rivers, seas, lakes, swamps, icebergs. Groundwater and atmospheric air vapors are considered separately.
Of all this, only 3% is fresh water. Most of it is found in icebergs, as well as in rivers and lakes on the continents. So how much of the water on Earth is in the seas and oceans? These basins are places of accumulation of s alty H2O, which makes up 97% of the total.
If it were possible to collect all the water that is on earth in one drop, then the sea would takea volume of about 1,400 million km3, and fresh water would gather into a drop of 10 million km3. As you can see, there is 140 times less fresh water on Earth than s alt water.
What is the percentage of fresh water on Earth?
About 3% of all liquid is fresh water. Most of it is concentrated in icebergs, mountain snows and groundwater, and only a small amount is in the rivers and lakes of the continents.
Actually, fresh water is divided into accessible and inaccessible. The first group consists of rivers, swamps and lakes, as well as the waters of the surface layers of the earth's crust and atmospheric air vapor. Man has learned to use all this for his own purposes.
How many percent of fresh water on Earth is inaccessible? First of all, these are large reserves in the form of icebergs and mountain snow covers. They make up the majority of fresh water. Also deep waters of the earth's crust form a significant part of all fresh H2O. People have not yet learned to use either source, but there is great benefit in this, because. a person cannot yet competently dispose of such an expensive resource as water.
The water cycle in nature
Fluid circulation plays a big role for living organisms, because water is a universal solvent. This makes it the main indoor environment of animals and plants.
Water is concentrated not only in the body of man and other creatures, but also in waterbasins: seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, swamps. The fluid cycle begins with precipitation such as rain or snow. Then the water accumulates and then evaporates under the influence of the environment. This is clearly seen in periods of drought and heat. The circulation of liquid in the atmosphere determines how many percent of the water on earth is concentrated in a solid, liquid and gaseous state.
The cycle is of great ecological importance, because the liquid circulates in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and the earth's crust, and thus self-cleansing. In some reservoirs, where the level of pollution is quite high, this process is of great importance for maintaining the life of the organisms of the ecosystem, but the restoration of the former "purity" takes a long period of time.
Origin of water
The riddle of how the first water appeared has not been solved for a long time. However, several hypotheses have appeared in the scientific community that offer options for the formation of liquid.
One of these guesses refers to the time when the Earth was still in its infancy. It is associated with the fall of "wet" meteorites, which could bring water with them. It accumulated in the bowels of the Earth, which gave rise to the primary hydration shell. However, scientists cannot answer the question of what percentage of the water on Earth was contained at that distant time.
Another theory is based on the terrestrial origin of water. MainThe impetus for the formation of this hypothesis was the finding of a relatively large concentration of heavy hydrogen deuterium in the seas and oceans. The chemical nature of deuterium is such that it could only be formed on Earth by increasing the atomic mass. Therefore, scientists believe that the liquid was formed on Earth and has no cosmic origin. However, researchers who support this hypothesis still cannot answer the question of what percentage of water on Earth was 4.4 billion years ago.
