Water is Precious

Many of us are familiar with the verse “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” from the poem: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Most of us, however, probably dont realize how true those words are in terms of the amount of freshwater available to us.

Have you ever wondered where our water is stored? As you probably guessed, most of it is in the oceans. In fact, over 97% of all water on the planet is too salty for us to drink. Of the remaining 3% that is freshwater, about 2% is tied up in ice caps and glaciers and about 0.9% is stored as water in the ground. That leaves less than 0.1% of the worlds total water supply to be split up between rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere (stored as water vapor)!

More information about the water cycle can be found at: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html