Understanding the Hydrosphere: Human Impact and Environmental Equilibrium

Hydrosphere – the Water Cycle

This dissertation will discuss in detail, the water cycle, - also referred to as a hydrosphere - its functions, and the environmental implications of humans, on that biosphere, which in result is a part of a larger biosphere.

Our planet the Earth, has been sustaining life for a very long time, we can theorize that the life exists on the Earth for billions of years. However, during the second half of the 20th Century, the impact of the environmental disturbances, caused by human activities is now as significant as the changes wrought by natural processes, but even more destructive on a long-term basis.

A dynamic state in which an ecosystem remains somewhat constant is referred to as Equilibrium; but due to a large-scale

The hydrosphere is the area of the Earth, where water movement and storage occur; as liquid water on the surface, such as rivers, lakes, oceans, and beneath the surface such as groundwater, or ice. Water exists in many states, which could be in the form of polar ice caps, and glaciers, and as water vapor in the atmosphere. (Dorsner, 2017).

The cycling of these elements is interconnected, the movement of water is critical for the leaching of nitrogen and phosphate into rivers, lakes, and oceans. Mineral nutrients are cycled, either rapidly or slowly, through the entire biosphere between the biotic (organic), and abiotic (non-organic) world, and from one living organism to

(WHO, 2005).

Human interventions in watersheds, lakes and river systems take many forms - deforestation, farming, irrigation, river damming and extractions from subterranean aquifers. Wetlands play a crucial role in the filtering of fresh water, including the removal of various chemicals and potentially toxic elements, such as heavy metal pollutants, as cadmium and lead. (WHO, 2005).

How might it change your life if you were to reduce your impacts?

I we were to reduce impact on the biosphere, our life would without a doubt change for the better, we would live in a cleaner and healthier environment, we would breathe cleaner air, and we would have access to a healthier food. A majority of the negative human causalities, are the effect of inability to take any responsibility for its own actions, which in effect might be caused by a lack of proper environmental education and