Geog1016: water resources

Question 1

1.what’s a hydrological cycle ？
2.what effects does it have on climate?
3.what’s the characteristic of global water scarcity?

Answer 1

1. circulation of water between lithosphere. atmosphere. hydrosphere
2. cooling effect by evaporation (evaporative cooling)
3. No/little water scarcity
   physical water scarcity
   economic water scarcity

Question 2

What are the solutions to water crisis?

Answer 2

1. conserving
   -water-recycle / reuse –> for agricultural irrigation
   -water reclamation
2. developing
   -reservoir/ rain water harvesting
   -dams eg. the three gorges
   -desalinization
   -long distance water tranfer
3. allocation

Question 3

How to control water demand?

Answer 3

control water price

Question 4

What are the water-related hazards?
How is salinization of soils resulted?

Answer 4

floods. droughts. salinization of soils
Under strong sunlight, evaporation occurs and water are evaporated, bringing up salts to the surface of the soil under the capillary effect. As a result, water is evaporated and salt stayed behind.

Question 5

What’s aquifer, confined layer and unconfined layer

Answer 5

-Aquifer means groundwater ,
-unconfined layer is the layer of water at the same level of the water table, below the soil surface

-the water table fluctuates according to the amount of recharge/discharge

-the confined aquifer means the groundwater separated from the atmosphere by an impermeable layer

Question 6

which kind of aquifer has the highest ph value, and which has the lowest?

Answer 6

Highest 7.8: limestone aquifer
lowest: volcanic aquifer

Question 7

Name and describe 4 measurement/ component of water

Answer 7

1. sodium and irrigation
   - sodium reacts with soil to reduce permeability
   -Sodium Absorption Ratio decides whether the water is suitable for irrigation (SAR>9) permeability problem
   sar<3 suitable for plant growth
2. Alkalinity
   -to protect aquatic life
   -acts as buffer to have resistance to ph changes
3. hardness
   -depends on the amount of carbonate
   ‘carbonate hardness’- a kind of measure to show how much carbonate r there in water
   - dissolved co2 is removed through boiling
4. DO; dissolved oxygen
   ***affect by temp. pressure. salts. organic matters

Question 8

what’s anoxic, hypoxic

Answer 8

anoxic ; an aquatic system with no dissolved oxygen
hypoxic ; an aquatic system with low concentration of oxygen

Question 9

what is phytoplanktom bloom

Answer 9

phytoplanktom is a result of pollution after eutrophication take place.
the DO in day time is higher due to respiration but lower at night.
the dead phytoplanktom sink to the bottom and is decomposed by bacteria

Question 10

BOD
COD

Answer 10

-measurement of biological content in water
- amount of organic compound in water

Question 11

how can ground water be polluted and how can we protect them?

Answer 11

oil leakage, leaky storage tanks , overuse of fertilizers , landfills
protect by laws

Question 12

how does oil pollution/ spill occurs?
what impacts does it have ?
what is the cleaning up methods?

Answer 12

• tanker accidents. urban runoff
• recover cannot be more than 15%
• recover methods:
• using sorbant materials. surface dispersant :use porganic chemicals to break down the oil to smaller droplets to let it better mixed with water
  -controlled burns