How many percent of the water on Earth? The hydrosphere of the planet and other components

Water plays an exceptional role in maintaining the vital activity of any organism. This substance can be represented in three aggregate states: solid, liquid and gaseous. But it is the liquid that is the main internal environment of the human body and other organisms, because Here all biochemical reactions take place, and it is in it that all the structures of the cell are located.

How many percent is water on the ground?

According to some estimates, about 71% of the entire surface of the Earth is water. It is represented by oceans, rivers, seas, lakes, bogs, icebergs. Separate are the groundwater, as well as a pair of atmospheric air.

Of all this, only 3% is fresh water. Most of it is in icebergs, as well as in rivers and lakes on the continents. So how many percent of the water on Earth is in the seas and oceans? These pools are places of accumulation of saline H2O, which is 97% of the total volume.

If it became possible to collect all the water that is on the ground, in one drop, then the sea would occupy a volume of about 1.400 million km ³ , and fresh would gather in a drop of 10 million km ³ . As you can see, fresh water is 140 times less on the Earth than salty.

How many percent is fresh water on Earth?

About 3% of the total fluid is fresh water. Most of it is concentrated in icebergs, in upland snow and groundwater, and only a small amount falls on the rivers and lakes of the continents.

Actually, fresh water is divided into affordable and inaccessible. The first group consists of rivers, marshes and lakes, and also includes waters of surface layers of the earth's crust and a pair of atmospheric air. All this man has been trained to use for his own purposes.

How many percent of fresh water on Earth is inaccessible? First of all, these are large reserves in the form of icebergs and mountain snow cover. They make up most of the fresh water. Also, the deep waters of the earth's crust form an essential part of all fresh H2O. Neither the one nor the other source people have not yet learned to use, but this is of great benefit, because A person can not yet competently dispose of such an expensive resource as water.

The water cycle in nature

Circulation of the liquid plays a big role for living organisms, because Water is a universal solvent. This makes it the main internal environment of animals and plants.

Water concentrates not only in the body of man and other creatures, but also in water basins: seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, marshes. The fluid cycle begins with precipitation such as rain or snow. Then water accumulates, and then evaporates under the influence of the environment. This is clearly visible in the period of drought and heat. The circulation of liquid in the atmosphere determines how much of the water on the ground is concentrated in a solid, liquid and gaseous state.

The cycle has great ecological significance, because the liquid circulates in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and the earth's crust, and thus self-cleaning. In some water bodies, where the level of pollution is high enough, this process plays an enormous role in supporting life activity, the ecosystem's organisms, however, the restoration of the former "cleanliness" takes a long time.

Origin of water

The riddle about how the first water appeared can not be solved for a long time. However, several hypotheses have emerged in the scientific community that offer variants of liquid formation.

One such conjecture refers to the time when the Earth was still in its infancy. It is associated with the fall of "wet" meteorites, which could bring water with them. It accumulated in the bowels of the Earth, which gave rise to the primary hydrated shell. Nevertheless, scientists can not answer the question, how many percent of water on Earth was kept at that distant time.

Another theory is based on the terrestrial origin of water. The main impetus to the formation of this hypothesis was the finding of a relatively large concentration of heavy hydrogen of deuterium in the seas and oceans. The chemical nature of deuterium is such that it could be formed only on the Earth by increasing the atomic mass. Therefore, scientists believe that the liquid was formed on Earth and has no cosmic origin. However, researchers who support this hypothesis still can not answer the question of how much water on Earth was 4.4 billion years ago.