Objective 1: Understanding the problem
Water is one of our most important basic needs, but almost the whole planet is covered in it, so where is the problem. The picture above gives us clues in to the issues that we'll be studying in this unit of the course, so we're going to use it to start your investigation.
Open up a word or google doc to write down answers and responses to the questions/activities below. Using the picture above;
1) Your mission is to find out where this is. Write down the location of where these two boats can be found. Aim to record the continent, name of the country or countries and maybe the region or any other location information you think may be useful. Obviously, this is tough so I'll give you a big clue. This place is mentioned on p48 of your text books. Find a map that helps you to show the location and add this in to your doc
2) Find out a little bit about these countries - what were they 30 years ago (this might be part of the explanation)
3) Clearly these boats shouldn't be where they are - so, What is the problem that left them there?
4) Explain how this happened. This is a sea that has now dried up - what caused this? Investigate why the water disappeared and the factors that caused it. Record them in your doc - don't cut and paste!! Write in your own words
5) Now find out about the impacts of the water disappearing. Create a table with 3 columns. The headings should be "Social", "Economic" and "Environmental" as you find out about the different impacts write them in each column (for example there have been impacts in human health, that would be social - but look for more specific information)
6) Bonus section! The above will probably take most of the lesson, but if you finish, look at the solutions. Has anything been done to stop the water disappearing? Could the water ever come back?
Open up a word or google doc to write down answers and responses to the questions/activities below. Using the picture above;
1) Your mission is to find out where this is. Write down the location of where these two boats can be found. Aim to record the continent, name of the country or countries and maybe the region or any other location information you think may be useful. Obviously, this is tough so I'll give you a big clue. This place is mentioned on p48 of your text books. Find a map that helps you to show the location and add this in to your doc
2) Find out a little bit about these countries - what were they 30 years ago (this might be part of the explanation)
3) Clearly these boats shouldn't be where they are - so, What is the problem that left them there?
4) Explain how this happened. This is a sea that has now dried up - what caused this? Investigate why the water disappeared and the factors that caused it. Record them in your doc - don't cut and paste!! Write in your own words
5) Now find out about the impacts of the water disappearing. Create a table with 3 columns. The headings should be "Social", "Economic" and "Environmental" as you find out about the different impacts write them in each column (for example there have been impacts in human health, that would be social - but look for more specific information)
6) Bonus section! The above will probably take most of the lesson, but if you finish, look at the solutions. Has anything been done to stop the water disappearing? Could the water ever come back?
Objective 2: Identify the ways in which water
is utilised at the regional scale
In this section we look at the many different ways in which humans utilise water. Within this section we examine the 3 categories of Agricultural, Industrial and Domestic water use. We also examine how changes in the proportion of water use for each of these three categories can tell us about the level of development within a country. As country's develop their use of water increases, but they start using that water in different ways. As countries develop, they also begin to pollute more water sources, leading to issues of supply and access to clean fresh water. |
Objective 3: Examine the environmental and human
factors affecting patterns and trends in physical
water scarcity and economic water scarcity
We call not having enough of something "Scarcity". So not having enough water is Water Scarcity. However, there are a number if different ways that a country or region might experience water scarcity. In this section we need to learn the difference between....
Physical Water Scarcity and Economic Water ScarcityIt is also important to understand the different natural factors, human activities and trends that contribute to increasing issues of water scarcity. We will examine these in class.
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One of the reasons we also run in to water issues is because we do not use the water that we have wisely. In Agricultural, Industrial and Domestic water use, we are guilty of wasting large amounts of water every day. In this section we will look at some of the worst examples and some possible solutions to help reduce wastage.
Agricultural Water WasteWe waste huge amounts of water in agriculture. Much of this come from old practices that are very water intensive such as supplying surface water in Furrow's or Drainage Basins where water can be lost through salinisation, evaporation or erosion. These are very inefficient methods where anything between 25% and 80% of the total water can be lost, yet this remains the main method of irrigation for around 80% of the agricultural areas across the World.
A lot of water is also lost in the process of Aerial irrigation, where crops are sprayed by sprinklers. Again this leads to oversupplying crops with water and large amounts lost to surface runoff and evapotranspiration. 10-40% of all water used is lost using this method, but it is still used within around 10% of the worlds agricultural farmland |
Drip Irrigation - A solution?
Drip irrigation is currently only used for around 1 % of agricultural irrigation in the World, but it is the most efficient method we have. Only 5-25% of water is lost. The method works by passing water through small pipes which allow small drips of water to fall in very specific amounts and only in areas where they are needed to aid the growth of the crops. This method is very expensive and has high set up costs, but allows very sophisticated control and monitoring of irrigation and is the most efficient method we have.
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Industrial and Domestic Water WasteA lot of water is wasted both by industry and domestically because of our reliance on using clean, treated water just once and not recycling or reusing supplies. Water from the fresh water system passes through homes or industry once before being returned to the water cycle. Most of this water could be used more than once. More industry's are being encouraged to use Grey Water (water that has been used once). Households can also do more to reuse water and pass water through different usage areas before releasing it back into drainage.
Germany and Japan are both well advanced in encouraging their industries to re-use water. Japan reuses over 75% of it's Industrial water and initiatives to push this even further up are continuing. |
The problem with Aquifers....
Aquifers are underground stores of water where water from precipitation has infiltrated into permeable rock and is stored or flows through rock beneath the ground. Humans have relied on fresh water from Aquifers for centuries, but as technology and demand have increased, more and more water has been pumped out of these aquifers. Additionally, many of the sources of water that recharge these aquifers are being used. Therefore, the water table (the level of the water) is falling. This can lead to aquifers simply drying up or other consequences. For example, in the mediterranean area, drops in water table in aquifers close to the coast has resulted in salt water contamination. As the level of fresh water reduces, there is a change in pressure and sea water begins flowing in to the Aquifers. With over 40% of global fresh drinking water and 30% of global water used for irrigation, Aquifer depletion could have serious consequences for the future of water availability. |
Water Scarcity Case Study: The Aral Sea
During the lesson we will be investigating the Aral sea and compiling a case study. You will have a lot of questions and some of the answers you may have to search hard for. As a good starting point, the following websites have very good overviews of the Aral sea situation.