OPTION 2 SEMINAR BY DIEDRE JOHNSON The Water Cycle: The Water Cycle (also known as the hydrologic cycle) is the journey water takes as it circulates from the land to the sky and back again. The Sun's heat provides energy to evaporate water from the Earth's surface (oceans, lakes, etc.). Plants also lose water to the air (this is called transpiration). The water vapor eventually condenses, forming tiny droplets in clouds. When the clouds meet cool air over land, precipitation (rain, sleet, or snow) is triggered, and water returns to the land (or sea).
Transpiration removes water from plants and soil. Air currents take water vapour into the atmosphere where cooler temperature causes it to condense into clouds. Air currents move water around the globe; cloud particles collide and fall out of the sky as snow, hail or sleet. Most water falls back into ocean or on land as rain where the water flows over ground as runoff. Some of runoff enters rivers flowing water towards ocean where water cycle had started.
Three effects that urbanization including flood control efforts has on flooding are water being forced into smaller channels that creates floods, the ground is also less porous and less permeable than rural land, which forces the water to run off instead of filtering into the ground, and natural buffers are destroyed that all lead to flooding. Urban flood controls that attempt to lessen floods are artificial levees, dams, and altering of a stream channel. Causes and the types of floods are regional floods-seasonal during rapid melting of snow or heavy rains. Another is flash floods that influences rainfall intensity and duration, surface conditions, and topography, ice jam floods that is stream rising that breaks up the ice and creates ice flows that can pile up and suddenly give away causing a flash flood. The last is dam failure floods, which is when a dam gives way.
Final Essay Exam GEOL 108 1. Describe the paths of water through the hydrologic cycle. Explain the processes and the energy gains and losses involved in the changes of water between its 3 states. Operationally, we often most concerned with water does when it reaches the solid earth, both on the surface and in the sub-surface. Explain the relationship between the saturated zone, the water table, a ground water well and the cone of depression, all within the sub-surface.
What about at an increased temperature? Answer = The weather may be calm with decreased temperatures verses a warmer temperature. The sun heats the water to evaporate and to produce water vapors that transform into clouds. According to our lab manual, clouds form at many different altitudes in the troposphere when water vapor in warm air rises and cools. Experiment 1: Water Movement POST LAB QUESTIONS 1.
An example of this can be found in glaciation. During glaciations the weight of ice pushing on the Earth can depress the crust, causing the land to fall relative to the level of the sea. When the ice goes in warmer periods the land rebounds upwards as Scotland and Northern Britain are today - rising relative to the level of the sea. Eustatic sea level change is a GLOBAL change in sea level, linked directly to the temperature of the Earth. In warmer periods there is less ice and the water is warmer, so expands and sea levels rise.
This is because there will still be a lot nutrients and soil left behind from the previous ecosystem. Therefore less ammonification and nitrification will be needed as the soil will already be suitable for more complex plant species. Natural succession can therefore be altered by both nature and human intervention, take stud land bay psammosere ecosystem for example that is deliberately cut back so that you can
This puts pressure on the crack, and expands it wider. After the ice has melted, more melt water will get in, and it will freeze over and over again. This eventually makes bits of rocks come away from the surface. Many landforms and moraines are left behind by the glacier. Moraine is sediment deposited by a glacier.
The bank of the river channel becomes worn away as a result of vertical erosion, due to the processes of hydraulic action which is the forces of flowing water against the river bed and banks caused by the volume of flowing water compared to kinetic energy and attrition which is the material being carried in the river colliding which then breaks the loads down into smaller pieces. Also the velocity of the water in its upper course of the river is slower as more energy is needed in overcoming friction on the uneven channel. however as the river travels more downstream less vertical and more lateral erosion begins to take place, the process of erosion which takes place her is attrition which is the carrying an breaking of the load and also abrasion which is when the material collides and wears away the bed rock, resulting the the river channel becoming more smoother, an also during the mid course you are more likely to come across flood plains. The channel characteristics also change when going downstream as the roughness decreases meaning that features such as potholes cannot be formed as the bed load is too small due to erosion wearing it away and breaking it down in to more smaller and rounder particles. Also as result of traveling downstream the mid-course and lower course tend to be more efficient and also has a smaller wetted perimeter.
When water freezes, latent heat is also released, warming the air in contact with the forming ice. Latent heat plays an important role in the redistribution of heat on the surface of Earth, especially through evaporation in the tropics and subtropics and the subsequent precipitation in higher latitudes. Secondly the warm waters sets up a low-pressure region around Iceland, reaching over the Norwegian Sea. The Icelandic Low acts as an enormous whirlpool sucking in warm air from the subtropical regions on top of the Gulf Stream and sending much of the heat to Norwegian shores. The transport of heat by the warm ocean