EQ1: What are the processes operating within the hydrological cycle from global to local scale? Flashcards
What is essential to life on Earth?
Water
What kind of resource is water?
A scarce resource.
What does failure to carefully manage water promise?
Water insecurity.
The global hydrological cycle is…
of enormous importance to life on Earth.
The drainage basin is an open…
subsystem within the global hydrological cycle.
Water budgets and river systems are strongly influenced by the…
hydrological cycle.
The complex hydrological system adjusts and changes as a result of what?
Physical and human factors.
What is a system?
Any set of interrelated components that are connected together to form a working whole, characterised by inputs, stores, processes (or flows) and outputs.
What are the two types of system?
• a closed system
• an open system
When does a closed system occur?
When there is transfer of energy but not matter between the system and its surroundings (the inputs come from within the system).
What does an open system receive?
Inputs from and transfers outputs of energy and matter to other systems.
Why is a hydrological cycle a closed system?
Because all the water is continually circulated through the stores and there is a constant amount of water in the system. The system does not change because there are no gains from or losses to other systems.
What is the global circulation of water driven by?
Solar energy and gravitational potential energy.
How does solar energy drive the cycle?
Global circulation of water is heated by the sun, water on the Earth’s surface evaporates into the atmosphere, while water is also drawn from the soil by plants and evaporated from leaves and stems by the process of evapotranspiration.
What happens when humid air rises?
Condensation occurs at the cooler temperatures, forming clouds, and this eventually leads to precipitation and water is returned back to the land and oceans on the Earth’s surface.
On land, what is gravitational potential energy converted to?
Kinetic energy as the water moves through the system by plant interception, or over land as surface runoff. Water also flows through the soil by processes of infiltration and throughflow.
What happens when water flows through soil by the processes of infiltration or throughflow?
Here it may be stored as soil moisture, or if the bedrock is permeable or porous, will percolate into the rock where it’s stored as groundwater. Some of this water will return to the oceans via streams and rivers
As the global hydrological system is a closed system of interlinked processes, what does this mean for the amount of global water?
It is finite and constant.
What does gravitational potential energy do in the hydrological cycle?
Causes rivers to flow downhill and precipitation to fall to the ground. Keeps water moving through the system in a sequence of inputs, outputs, stores and flows.
Define 𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
Water heated by the sun turns to gas and rises. The conversion of water to vapour.
Define 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗻𝗼𝗳𝗳
Water that runs across the land into rivers/lakes/oceans.
Define 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
Water taken up by plants and transpired onto the leaf surface.
Define 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄
Water contained within the soil and underlying rocks, and derived mainly from the percolation of rainwater and meltwater.
Define 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
Rain, sleet, snow etc. Moisture in any form.
Water that fall from clouds