1. Groundwater, Running Water and Estuaries
Chapter 6

2. What does Water Balance Mean?
There is a balance between the precipitation and the evaporation rates within the water cycle.

3. Water Cycle The water cycle is
Water constantly moves among the oceans, the atmosphere, the solid Earth, and the biosphere.

4. Parts of the water cycle
Evaporation – when water is evaporated from a lake, ocean or stream
Precipitation – liquid or solid water from the clouds
Infiltration - the movement of surface water into rock or soil through cracks and pore spaces
Transpiration - the release of water into the atmosphere from plants
Runoff – when flash rain storm hits the ground and is not absorbed.

5. Distribution of the Water on Earth

6. Groundwater
Zone of aeration – area above the water table where soil, sediment and rock are not saturated.
The water table is the upper level of the saturation zone of groundwater
Zone of saturation – area where the soil, sediments and rock are saturated with water.
Groundwater is the water within this zone(Zone of Saturation)

7. Movement of water underground
Porosity
The percentage of pore
Spaces determines how much
groundwater can be stored
Permeability
Ability to transmit water through connected pore spaces
Clay – smallest amount of pore space of any soil type – not permeable

8. Groundwater: Aquifers
Underground water storage
Water flows through ground and is stored within rock spaces
Number one source of freshwater world wide

9. Problems with Groundwater
Withdrawing too much
Toxins leaching into the groundwater
Heavy metals contaminating the water
Salt water intrusion

10. US Aquifers Ogallala Aquifer
Central part of the US Two problems: contamination and depletion
Guarding the Ogallala

11. Wells
Artesian Well
An artesian well is any formation in which groundwater rises on its own under pressure
Pumping can cause a drawdown (lowering) of the water table.

12. Springs
A spring forms whenever the water table intersects the ground surface.
Hot Springs
Water is 6–9ºC warmer than the mean air temperatures
Water is heated by cooling of igneous rock.

13. Springs Geyser Intermittent hot springs
Water turns to steam and erupts.
Old Faithful – Yellowstone National Park – erupts every 90 minutes

14. Caverns A cavern is a naturally formed underground chamber
Erosion forms most caverns at or below the water table
Stalactites (grow downward)
Stalagmites (growing upward).

15. JUSTIN.MELTON@AXA-ADVISORS.COM.
Karst Topography
Form when water dissolves rock as it moves through ground
Sinkholes—surface depressions
also come from aquifer depletion (Aquifers gone wrong!!)
Caves and caverns

16. Sinkholes Form in numerous ways:
Aquifer depletion – hollow pores collapse
Seeping water dissolving rock

17. Drainage Basins
A drainage basin is the land area that contributes water to a river

18. A stream’s profile
Headwater – at the beginning of a stream (Mountains)
Mouth – at the end of a stream (ocean)
Tributary –a stream that empties into another stream.
Factors that increase downstream
channel size
discharge

19. Base Level Base level - Lowest point to which a stream can erode
Ultimate base level is sea level
Temporary or local base levels
lakes
main streams
Meandering Stream
Slow moving stream located in the flat regions or territory

20. Capacity
Maximum load a stream can carry

21. Controlling Floods Artificial Levees Flood-Control Dams
here earthen mounds are built on the banks of a river. Increase the amount of water a channel can hold.
The Levees in New Orleans broke in Katrina
Flood-Control Dams
Where floodwater is stored and let out slowly.

22. Controlling Floods Limit development
Advocating sound floodplain management
Preserve floodplains instead of building on them

23. Estuaries Where fresh and salt water meet
Breeding grounds for most marine life
If contaminated, loss of ocean productivity
Called sounds, mangrove forests, estuaries, marshes

24. Estuaries Packet 