Summary: Water

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• What does the water cycle do?

  movement of water between various water storages

• What influences the water cycle?

  - Plants: take up water from the upper soil and use it to grow, a lot of that water is also transpired out 
  - Sublimation: ice going directly into gas (water vapour) then it is cold and dry + low pressure
  - Humans: drink water

• Why does water not stay long in the atmosphere?

  Because it has a rapid residence time - stores less water

• What are drainage basin (water reservoir) imputs?

  Precipitation/energy from the sun

• What processes are involved in a drainage basin (water reservoir)?

  Condensation, evaporation, evapotranspiration, streamflow, surface runoff, percolation, infiltration and groundwater flow

• What is the ocean's biological pump?

  Pumps carbon from the surface to the deep ocean

• What is carbon sequestration?

  Process of capturing and storing atmospheric co2 in other stores; forest, soils, oceans, geological formation

• What is the diffusion of carbon?

  Co2 from the atmosphere is taken up by the surface of the ocean, phytoplankton use dissolved co2 for food and to build their structures - turn it into organic carbon compound (their bodies and their structure). The phytoplankton is eaten by larger organisms - the carbon in the plankton is absorbed by the organism - they breathe and release some of the carbon back into the ocean - also die and sink- this accumulates to form carbon-rich sediments. As they sink the bacteria attack them and that helps them to decompose - as it sinks, it stores the co2 into the deep ocean!

• What is vegetation request carbon?

  trees absorb carbon through photosynthesis and store carbon in the leaves and stams. Because it is living, it is respiring some of the co2 into the atmosphere + leaves die and decompose and put carbon back into the atmosphere. 

• What slows runoff down?

  Plants and grass slow the infiltration down and giving the water more time to be infiltrated to pass into the soil.- result: less runoff and more water passing into the ground. In a urban area - much less infiltration because the land is build - most is becoming runoff and runs off into the rivers.