Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ALBA, ROMANIA
Coordinating teacher,
Vant Lilica
English Teacher
Water - the source of life
“Water is the joy of life”
African saying
Water - at least the fresh one - is more precious than oil and more necessary than wheat or
rice .Water is life and at the same time it is its quality, or, as specialists emphasize, in the
environmental planetary system, water is the indispensable condition for life and for the variety of
human beings, it is that fundamental natural resource, which any area of economic activity depends
on.
Hydrosphere represents a real blood system of geographical structures because water
relates closely with other geospheres offering the environment a new and unique quality.
Thus, as a component related to environmental existence, water flow in nature is essential
to its functionality and dynamism. Water circuit is a permanent- at a planetary scale- transformation
process of a large amount of sea and ocean water which, through its conversion due to evaporation –
turns into fresh water, a process carried out by a huge plant that is Nature itself.
It is this process which creates and sustains life on Earth. The transformation from inorganic
substance to the organic one is produced in and by water.
II. Fresh Water Resources – “A rare treasure, desired by those who do not have
it, and unvalued by those who have it.”
Fresh water, unlike salt water, represents limited and reduced resources overall and
extremely unleveled in comparison with the dry land. Geographically, fresh water resources are
massively concentrated in certain areas, while highly rare in others. Lakes and rivers are abundant in
some regions (Northern Europe, Northern South America, and Equatorial Regions), however almost
inexistent in other areas. Precipitations also vary sensibly from year to year, season to season, in the
same ballpark region. In addition, due to the existing temperatures in these environmental areas,
evaporation is growing less or more intense and, as a result, the precipitations differ sensibly.
From an economic point of view, the significance of the uneven natural distribution of fresh
water resources is strongly emphatic. This distribution however, clashes with that of necessity. Not
only does a large part of fresh water resources remain blocked in glaciers, but also the most abundant
resources of fresh water are located in relatively cold regions, improper or less proper for
agricultural cultivations. On the other hand, in warm regions, where the necessity is far larger, the
resources of fresh water are scarcer. There is a separation between the distribution of fresh water
resources and the distribution of agricultural fields, territorial distribution between the population
and industrial regions.
There is also added the limitation of water resources to which its quality is still affected. It is
affected due to: the phenomenon of the growth of population, the extracting of water supply,
chemical fertilization, pesticides coming from intense agricultural activities, and industrial water.
The technical-economic capitalization of the fresh water resources has both a quantitative
dimension and a qualitative one, which are strongly bound. In well-developed countries the technical
means and financial resources allowed them to eliminate or to adjust a series of existing constraints,
through complex hydrotechnical establishments, flood control, water purification systems, in order
to supply the urban concentrations. Special issues are present in developing countries where
considerable collectivities haven’t got access to fresh water, with all the repercussions on their
health. As a consequence, the assurance of the necessary consumable water is an actual problem –in
some areas- not only due to its amount, but also to its quality.
III. The characteristics of water environment refers to the chemical and physical
attributes of water, as well as to the capacity of self-purification, which is very important in order to
preserve its quality. The organic substances’ decomposing activity made by bacteria, turns all the
substances which enter this circuit in nature into mineral, which is determinant in the self-
purification process of water. But the phenomenon of water pollution manifests itself when the
amount and quality of the polluting substances outrun the limits of tolerance.
Bibliography