Essay On The Water Cycle

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The world’s total water supply is approximately 332.5 million cubic miles of water, which covers up about 70% of earth’s surface. With that much water inhabiting our planet, there obviously has to be a way to keep the water moving. We call this the water cycle, which has been around longer than we can know. The great thing about the water cycle is that it can never stop working because water will always be evaporated. In fact, we are now using the same water as we did during Earth’s beginning, thanks to the water cycle. Growing up, we all learned about the water cycle and its three simple stages. Those stages were evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Come to find out there is a lot more that goes into the cycle than we first learned.
Deposition occurs when a vapor is directly turned into a solid. Deposition is most frequently seen in frost or snowflakes. Although this process is relevant to the water cycle, it is not one that we experience as frequently as some of the other processes and is certainly not as distinct. The third step in the water cycle is precipitation. After the molecule has been turned back into a liquid, something must happen. That “something” is precipitation. According to an article from usgs.gov, in 2015, Precipitation is water released from clouds in the form of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow, or hail. This is the part in the water cycle that connects water from the atmosphere to earth. The most frequent type of precipitation that we experience is rain. Infiltration is another minor process in the water cycle. Infiltration is the process of water soaking into the ground and moving about the area into rocks and pore spaces. When water lands on shallow soil, it will move horizontally and vertically through. If the ground is deeper, the water could begin to recharge the groundwater aquifers. If this were to happen, people could make a hole in the ground and begin using it as a water source. There are many factors that impact infiltration such as precipitation intensity, soil characteristics, slope of the ground, and more. The ground can only soak up so much water at one time. The excess water is considered runoff water, which is surface water that runs off the

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