Is water a natural resource?

Question

Like can it run out??????? Like fossil fuels? Im talking about drinking water not the oceans...

Answer 1

hell yah..

Answer 2

Water is a natural resource and forms part of the water or hydrological cycle - meaning in effect that it just goes round and round.

The fossil fuels are consumed when they're burned and aren't part of a cycle.

Most of our drinking water starts life as salt water in the seas and oceans. As the sun shines on the ocean water evapourates leaving the salt behind, this freshwater is carried along by the winds and falls as the rain which supplies our reservoirs and ultimately drinking water.

As long as we have seas and oceans and as long as the sun shines we'll have fresh water. In some places it may become scarce - each person uses more water now than in the past and expanding populations add further pressure.

Answer 3

Drinking water is most certainly a natural resource. All of the answers so far are correct but only partially. There are plenty of areas of the world where drinkable water is already in very short supply and there are areas within the United States that could run out of drinkable water.

What most people do not realize is that because human population has grown so large we are using a very large amount of fresh water both for domestic use and for farming. In much of the western United States the rates of fresh water use are much greater than rain fall. A couple of examples that most people would recognize as falling in to that category are Las Vegas and Phoenix. Both cities rely on ground water for drinking and irrigation. Both are pumping ground water much faster than it is being replaced by rain fall in those desert areas. It is actually a certainty that both cities will run out of ground water and will need to come up with some other way of getting water. How is not at all obvious. Fortunately cities are fairly small and so those problems are solvable.

What most people might be surprised to learn is that much of the Midwest between the the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River also rely primarily on ground water for farm irrigation because rain fall in that region is sparse. The ground water they use is from a very ancient aquifer called the Ogallala Aquifer (see the link below) that was created by glacial melting at the end of the last ice age and is not being replenished by rain fall. It is a truly enormous aquifer but still it is being depleted and it to will run out in the not too distant future. That represents about 25% or so of American farm land that is supplied with water from a source that will run out. That farm area uses a true huge amount of water and it is not at all clear that there is any way to provide an alternative source once the aquifer runs out.

Answer 4

water shortage


expanding populations use more and more Potable water(world population has doubled in the last 50 years)
expanding agriculture that needs to keep up with the expanding populations uses the most ,,even more than the cities about 75% of all water reserves.

Deep under ground Carbon aquifiers are pumped dry ,by irresponsible egoistic and greedy farmers

.these Carbon Aquifers do not refill them selves causing sink holes often a few miles deep.
potable water is becoming more precious by the day
we will end up killing each other over Potable water
some people already are

overpopulation of an extra 70 million people a year (increasing all the time )and expanding agriculture ,which uses 70% of available potable water supplies ,has brought the good(sweet) water suplies to critical levels ,some countries have been in trouble already quite a while .
Waterharvesting .WILL also help solve the problems


WATER DISTRIBUTION

97%of the Earths water is salt

fresh water is only 3% of all the Earths water
most of it is beyond out reach

now much ice is melting and running into the seas fresh water lost for ever.

STORAGE or Location of % of the fresh water
ice and glaziers 74%
groundwater 800 meters + 13.5 %
groundwater less than 800meters 11.o%
Lakes 0.3%
soils 0.006%
Atmospheric in circulation 0.0035%
rivers 0.03%


frozen land or permafrost is not included and represent an unavailable storage of 40%

so of the 3% about 11.6 ,is easily available to us ,in rivers, lakes and ground water surface aquifers,more and more of this is becoming contaminated

now climate change and desertification because of irresponsible agriculture ,overgrazing and deforrestation is damaging world fresh water production .

POSITIVE ACTIONS
it is a good reason for concern and if we do not rectify matters by changing agricultural methods ,
promote sweet water production,(Masive reforrestation)

take care of what we got (Nature conservation)stop deforrestation

,,plus strong policing on usage,as well as economic usage of water in agriculture

and in the cities stop wasting and contaminating water,

,stop producing more people

we will be in serious trouble all round
and could end up looking like Mars .

PERMACULTURE
.
better to pump surface underground water supplies coupled to WATERHARVESTING

the natural way of nature is to evaporate moisture for clouds and this gets blown to places with less water any way ,what obstruct the clouds from getting to deserts ,tend to be mountains that are in the way,
but generally speaking ,the normal weather patterns spread rain evenly over the planet to balance out the temperatures and humidity.

As far as catching rain is concerned ,we do this all the time ,and have done so already since Babylonian times,and is a part of the more advanced Agriculture,that existed with the Egyptians,Central ,and south American indigenous peoples,and many others ,today we call this water harvesting.

In Permaculture the rule is to harvest water to the point of Zero runoff.
this means that all of the rain that falls on an area is absorbed by the terrain and not a drop leaves it.

by building dams,ponds or swales, with interconecting ditches,
if there are enough of these ;the places ,where before the rain water ran over the ground into the rivers and on to the sea ,(in a matter of hours or days),It now runs into absorbant dams or swales and saturates the ground and eventually reaches subteranean water deposits ,taking many months to do so.
Or it fills up ponds that can be used for Aquaculture.
And so a convex situation that repels water is transformed in a concave ,absorbant one and turning the area in to a sponge.

in Spain and Portugal ,which still display many examples of the conquering Moorish influence,One can find many remnants of Waterharvesting,such as aquaducts and tanks underneath the patios ,which collect the rain water from the roofs ,to be used in dryer times.

in Arabia ,on a large scale ,land has been shaped to catch and lead,rain water into sandy areas or to agricultural lands.sand is almost as good as dams because it absorbs water and holds it.

to find out more about Water harvesting I recomend:
the Permaculture designers manual by Bill Mollison,which cost about 40 dollars.
and is the best all round book you can get.(tagiari publishing, [e-mail])
.
other writers that are on the internet are
david Holmgren
Larry Santoyo
Kirk Hanson

Masanobu Fukuaka has written ,
One-Straw Revolution
The Road Back to Nature
The Natural Way of Farming
http://www.context.org/iclib/ic14/fukuok...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/masanobu_fu...

Simon Henderson
and Bill Molisson.

a representitive of the concept in USA is
Dan Hemenway at [e-mail]
[e-mail]
http://barkingfrogspc.tripod.com/frames....
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalo..

Answer 5

It is a natural resource.
It will not run out.
The evaporation part of the hydrologic cycle purifies water.

Answer 6

It is a natural resource, but it will not run out.

Answer 7

sure water could run out but it might take a long--- time. it might get polluted before it runs out. i wouldnt be worried about that.

Answer 8

Groundwater is continually replenished through rainfall.

Answer 9

yes, until all the water rights are in private control and then it is another commodity for sale.

Answer 10

depends on how you use it