Enquiry Question 1

Question 1

What is precipitation?

Answer 1

Moisture in any from.

Question 2

What is interception?

Answer 2

Temporary storage, as water is captured by plants, buildings and hard surfaces before reching the soil.

Question 3

What is vegetation storage?

Answer 3

Any moisture taken up by vegetation and held within plants.

Question 4

What is surface storage?

Answer 4

Any surface water in lakes, ponds, puddles.

Question 5

What is soil moisture?

Answer 5

Water held within the soil.

Question 6

What isgroundwater stprage?

Answer 6

Water held within permeable rocks (also known as an aquifer).

Question 7

What is channel storage?

Answer 7

Water held in rivers and streams.

Question 8

What is infiltration?

Answer 8

Water entering the topsoil. Most common during slow or steady rainfall.

Question 9

What is throughflow?

Answer 9

Also known as inter-flow; water seeping laterally through soil below the surface, but above the water table.

Question 10

What is percolation?

Answer 10

The downward seepage of water through rock under gravity, especially on permeable rocks e.g. sandstone and chalk.

Question 11

What is stem flow?

Answer 11

Water flowing down plant stems or drainpipes.

Question 12

What is base flow?

Answer 12

Slow-moving water that seeps into a river channel (also known as groundwater flow).

Question 13

What is channel flow?

Answer 13

The volume of water contained within a river channel ?(also called discharge and runoff).

Question 14

What is surface runoff?

Answer 14

Flow over the surface during an intense storm, or when the ground is frozen, saturated or impermeable clay. Also called overland flow.

Question 15

What is evaporation?

Answer 15

The conversion of water to vapour.

Question 16

What is transpiration?

Answer 16

Water taken up by plants and transpired onto the leaf surface.

Question 17

What is evapotranspiration?

Answer 17

The combined effect of evaporation and transpiration.

Question 18

What is river discharge?

Answer 18

The volume of water passing a certain point in the channel over a certain amount of time.

Question 19

What is a store?

Answer 19

Whare the water is contained. e.g. oceans

Question 20

What is a flux/flow?

Answer 20

Movement of water between stores. e.g rivers

Question 21

What is the global water budget?

Answer 21

The annual balance of water fluxes and the size of water stores.

Question 22

What is blue water?

Answer 22

Fresh, surface and groundwater, in other words, the water in freshwater lakes, rivers and aquifers.

Question 23

What is green water?

Answer 23

The amount of rainfall that is either intercepted by the vegetation,or enters the soil and is picked up by plants and evapotranspired back into the atmosphere.

Question 24

What is a drainage basin?

Answer 24

An area of land drained by a river and its tributaries (river system). It includes water found in the water table and surface run-off.

Question 25

What is a watershed line?

Answer 25

It is an imaginary line that seperates drainage basins and is usually a ridge of high land.

Question 26

What are some humaan factors that affect a drainage basin?

Answer 26

- Deforestation, - Urbanisation, - Resevoirs, - Overabstraction, - Cloud Seeding.

Question 27

What is cloud seeding?

Answer 27

It attempts to change the amount or type of precipitation by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation nuclei. e.g. China used it in the 2008 Beijing olympics to clear the air of pollution.

Question 28

What is urbanisation?

Answer 28

It is the building up of impermeable surfaces that reduces infiltration and increases surface run-off and throughflow artificial drains; stream and river discharges often increase rapidly as a result. e.g. In the UK, flood risk has increased due to urbanisation.

Question 29

What are resevoirs/dam construction?

Answer 29

Dams/ resevoirs increase surface water stores and evaporation and they reduce downstream river discharge.

Question 30

What is overabstraction of groundwater?

Answer 30

Where groundwater is abstracted from aquifers faster than it is replaces, causing reduced groundwater flow and a lower water table.

Question 31

What is a water balance?

Answer 31

It is the balance between precipitation, evaporation and run-off. It is a tool to assess the current status and trends in water resource availability within an area over a specific period of time.

Question 32

What is a river regime?

Answer 32

It can be defined as the annual variation in the discharge or flow of a river at a particular point or guaging station, usually measured in cumecs. Much of this flow is not from immediate precipitation or run-off, but is supplied from groundwater between periods of rain.