definitions

• Evaporation is the process of water changing from a liquid to a gas

  It transfers water from hydrosphere to atmosphere
• Precipitation is any form of water that falls from clouds, such as rain or snow.

  It transfers water from the atmosphere to the surface where it can be stored in different spheres
• Percolation is the movement of water through the soil and into the groundwater

  Occurs if the water is not evaporated quick enough
• The water that remains on the surface is called runoff and empties into lakes, rivers and streams that carry it back to the oceans to be evaporated again. Thus its a closed system
• Aquifer is a layer of rock or sediment that contains sufficient porosity and permeability so that significant quantities of water are able to soak into it and travel through it at a rate fast enough to sustain a well or spring.
• 97% of water is saline (ocean) and 3% is freshwater out of which only 0.3% is fresh surface water available for human use.

  Combined with growing population, this is a cause for water insecurity:

  Water stress (1700m^3 water/person), Water Scarcity (1000m^3/person)
• Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activities and poses a threat to the the cycles (e.g. Deficit/surplus water, slow or increased cc)
• Climate Change has an impact on precipitation patterns - more frequent droughts and floods, melting glaciers, sea level rise, ocean acidification, desertification, etc.
• Land Degradation is the loss of productive capacity of land due to natural processes or human activity
• Desertification is the process of land degradation in arid areas due to overuse of resources, deforestation, poor farming practices, etc.
• Deforestation is the removal of trees from forests, often resulting in loss of habitat for wildlife and other environmental problems such as soil erosion, flooding, and desertification
• biogeochemical carbon cycle: the movement of carbon between the atmosphere, oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems; annual variations in sizes and rates of transfer
• Oceanic pump: (recycling of organic matter (carbon) in the ocean

  Phytoplankton's are microscopic organism that sequester CO2

  Carbonate shells move into deep ocean water through the oceanic pump

  Thermohaline circulation which is the movement of seawater according to temperature drives oceanic current that transport nutrients and oxygen
• Anthropogenic: Human induced environmental changes
• Urbanisation: Impacts the wc, cc through the building of infrastructure
• Forestry impacts the cycles through the planting of trees on a large scale
• Abstraction: The extraction of water from underground
• Syncline is a basin like structure in the earths crust that is saturated with water.

  1. a trough or curvature of stratified rock e.g. London is syncline because of the weight of urbanised areas
• Carbon Capture: The process of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it underground
• Diurnal - daily changes to the wc and cc