Chapter 13: Water Resources Questions And Answers 2022/2023

Review the Key Questions and Concepts for this chapter on p. 318. Discuss the importance of the Colorado River basin in the United States and how human activities are stressing this system (Core Case study). - Answer - The Colorado River basin is important for the United States. This provides water and electricity from hydroelectric plants at the major dams for approximately 30 million people. This also provides for 15% of the water for the nation's crops and livestock. In addition, it provides water for the nation's driest and hottest cities. However, a lot of water is withdrawn from this river basin in order to grow crops and support cities in all types of climates. The overuse of this basin challenges the government and people living in arid and semiarid regions with shared river systems, as growing populations and economies place increasing demands on limited or decreasing supplies of surface water. Explain why access to water is a health issue, an economic issue, a women's and children's issue, a national and global security issue, and an environmental issue. - Answer - Global health issue: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that an average of 3,900 children who are younger than 5 years of age die daily from waterborne infectious diseases due to lack of access to safe drinking water. Economic issue: vital to reduce poverty and producing food and energy. Issue for women and children in less-developed country: women and girls often are responsible for finding and carrying daily supplies of water from distant wells and other sources to their homes. They do not have water piped to to their homes. National and Global Security: because of increasing tensions both within and between nations over access to limited water resources that they share. Environmental Issue: excessive withdrawal of water from rivers and aquifers results in falling water tables, decreasing river flows, shrinking lakes, and disappearing wetlands. - loss of water in combination with water pollution result in declining water quality, lower fish populations, species extinctions, and degradation of aquatic ecosystems. Describe how water is recycled by the hydrologic cycle and how human activities have overloaded and altered this cycle. - Answer - The world's freshwater supply is continually collected, purified, recycled, and distributed in the earth's hydrologic cycle and the movement of water in aquatic systems, in the air, and on land, which is driven by solar energy and gravity. This irreplaceable water recycling and purification system works well, unless we overload it with pollutants or withdraw freshwater from underground and surface water supplies faster than it is replenished. We can also alter long-term precipitation rates and distribution patterns of freshwater through our influence on projected climate change. What percentage of the earth's freshwater is available to us? - Answer - Only a tiny fraction of the plane