1.
The Ocean
2.
Ninety-eight percent of Earth's available freshwater is groundwater.
3.
About 1% of Earth's freshwater is easily accessible.
4.
68.7%
5.
Greenland and Antarctica, only contain 2% of the world's total water supply, but a whopping 70% of the Earth's freshwater.
6.
-see explanation-
7.
-see explanation-
8.
-see explanation-
Explanation:
1.
The ocean holds about 97 percent of the Earth's water; the remaining three percent is found in glaciers and ice, below the ground, in rivers and lakes. Of the world's total water supply of about 332 million cubic miles of water, about 97 percent is found in the ocean.
2.
Groundwater is defined as water that is found beneath the surface of the Earth in conditions of 100 percent saturation (if it is less than 100 percent saturation, then the water is considered soil moisture).
3.
Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields.
4.
Ice caps and global water distribution
As these charts and the data table show, the amount of water locked up in ice and snow is only about 1.7 percent of all water on Earth, but the majority of total freshwater on Earth, about 68.7 percent, is held in ice caps and glaciers.
5.
Most of that is in oceans, rivers, and lakes, but some are frozen in the Earth's two ice sheets. Those ice sheets, which cover most of Greenland and Antarctica, only contain 2% of the world's total water supply, but a whopping 70% of the Earth's freshwater.
6.
Twenty percent of all fresh surface water is in one lake, Lake Baikal in Asia. Another twenty percent (about 5,500 cubic miles (about 23,000 cubic kilometers)) is stored in the Great Lakes. Rivers hold only about 0.006 percent of total freshwater reserves.
7.
Groundwater is recharged from the surface; it may discharge from the surface naturally at springs and seeps and can form oases or wetlands. Groundwater is also often withdrawn for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use by constructing and operating extraction wells.
8.
Almost anything can be found in seawater. The most important components of seawater that influence life forms are salinity, temperature, dissolved gases (mostly oxygen and carbon dioxide), nutrients, and pH. These components help the living things in the water live the way that they do.
