Water Cycle & Ecology

Introduction

Modern agriculture (which drives the majority of deforestation), infrastructure, pollution, and over-extraction of water is disrupting the water cycle. On this page we explore how the water cycle is supposed to work, how ecology fits in, and how different human activities are disrupting this vital cycle. 

We'll also be exploring solutions for reversing these harmful patterns, and replenishing Earth's natural patterns.

Current Availability of Fresh Water

"Only 2.5% of the world's water is freshwater.

However, almost all of it is locked up in ice or the ground. Only a tiny fraction overall is available for human use. (USGS)

The world’s underground aquifers are being rapidly depleted. 

Since aquifers can take thousands of years to fill up, there’s not an infinite supply of water. The situation is critical. (NASA)

Water is a limited resource.

"We will always have the same amount of water on the earth, but we can't always use as much as we need." (National Drought Mitigation Center)"

- https://www.truthordrought.com/water 

Though only around 25% of the global population currently faces water scarcity, scientists warn that by 2050 current projections predict that number will rise to 52% of the estimated 9.7 billion humans.

Explained | World's Water Crisis | FULL EPISODE | Netflix

18:42 minute video

Further Reading

Where is Our Water Going?

"Although most water-saving tips focus on household use, far more water is embedded in the things we buy – especially the food we eat.

Currently up to 90% of all managed water is used to grow food. (International Water Management Institute)"

- https://www.truthordrought.com/water 

Calls to Action

Levels 1-3

Level 4

Calls to Action

Levels 1-3

Level 3-4

Calls to Action

These levels of action are listed numerically, but the bulleted suggestions are organized approximately from greatest impact to lesser.

Levels 1-3

Garden Use

Showering

Toilet Water

Kitchen Water

Some foods NEED to be rinsed (quinoa), soaked (kidney beans) or boiled (yucca) to make them safe to eat. Don't avoid these important safety steps just to save water if you're food specifically requires such methods.

Laundry

Bathroom Tap

Leaks

Level 3-4

Water Harvesting & Reuse

Click the following buttons to learn how you can harvest and reuse water at home.

Physics & The Water Cycle's

Most people have learned the basics of the water cycle. That rain and snow fall across the land, snow melt and rain water are pulled by gravity, finding ponds, streams, and puddles to collect in. 

Ground Water

Where the ground is permeable, water seeps deeper into the earth. Some of this can be pulled back up via wells, or flows horizontally (ish) to natural springs, or pushes up via seeps to create wetlands or bogs. If possible, the water goes deeper into aquifers which are underground caverns that push upward on the land. 

When we over-extract from aquifers, this can cause land subsidence which can cause structural damage for roads, homes, or even infrastructure such as dams which present a danger to communities if damaged. Aquifers take hundreds or even thousands of years to replenish, but can be tapped dry in mere decades depending on a regions geology, rain fall patterns, above-ground infrastructure (such as too much paving), as well as the rate of extraction. Mismanaging ground water doesn't impact the water cycle too much, but it does put communities at dire risk of water shortages and structural damage, even to the point of resulting in deaths.

Bodies of Water

From here (when possible) water flows downward, flowing into rivers and lakes, river basins, and bays or estuaries, then out to sea where it mixes with ocean water.

Evaporation

The next step is evaporation, generally powered by the sun, though hydrogen powered machines or vehicles, industrial processes  including certain types of cooking, and ground heated by geothermal energy can also evaporated water into the atmosphere.

When enough evaporation accumulates, the molecules begin to bend and obscure light, creating thin white clouds, and eventually dark grey clouds.

Perspiration

Similar to evaporation, plants take moisture from the soil and use energy from the sun to pump this fluid up through their stomata (specialized holes in their leaves) which is what gives us dew on cold mornings. 

On a larger scale though, forests produce enough and in a warm enough environment that this moisture rises like steam into the sky and produces clouds. This cloud production ability is so powerful that scientists have described the moisture entering the atmosphere as "rivers in the sky", and warn that deforestation in places like the Amazon Rainforest threaten farmers in countries far away.

More about this and other organisms in the next major section of this page.

Rain & Snowfall

Around the world precipitation is being disrupted because warmer air holds on to water longer, so as our climate warms, our atmosphere's water-holding capacity increases. This increasingly means hotter, more humid days, since water also holds heat better than air molecules, contributing to the "wet bulb" issue which will become increasingly dangerous in traditionally humid regions. Rain naturally cools when it falls, so regions around the world are now dealing with longer stretches of no rain, which means no relief from heat waves.

When the rain finally does fall, it's increasingly in heavier amounts because of the increasing delay and build up. More and more often, this results in flooding, especially in areas where the land has been altered from forest or wetland to farmland, or has been paved over to create communities or non-permeable parking lots.

Decreased rainfall is already impacting local and global food supplies, as well as drinking water sources for a growing number of communities. Lower and lower levels of snowfall, followed by earlier melts, and higher temperatures throughout the year, continues to destroy glaciers and once-snow-crusted mountain tops are increasingly bare. This is already impacting isolated communities who rely on these waters for daily life as well as growing crops.

Ecology & Water

This section is organized to help tell the story of the lesser-known, but vitally important portion of the water cycle. We'll focus in on how the water cycle is being disrupted by climate change as well as other human disturbances. By better understanding the physics, biology, and other interacting factors, we can generate more informed plans to maximize our success in repairing our water cycle instead of compounding the drought and flooding crisis.

Bio Water Cycle via Plants

Plants are vital to the water cycle with trees working hard to clean water, help water penetrate soils and aquifers, as well as respiring water back up into the atmosphere into clouds that produce rain which refills watersheds far away. 

Plants are listed first in this section because they make up an estimated 82% of all biomass on Earth, making them not only a huge portion of Earth's carbon storage, but also moisture storage and transportation.

Flying Rivers

This refers to rain falling in places like the Amazon, the water then being transpired into the atmosophere creating "flying rivers" that can travel long distances, providing rain for farmers in distant countries.

Bio-Rain Corridor

"This term helps describe the continental behavior of rain, it accentuates the importance that biology has on rain patterns, and it connotes eco-restoration possibilities by its similarity to the term biological corridor.

Hubert Savenije, a Dutch hydrologist studied moisture hopping ( aka the small water cycle) in the Sahel in Africa. Moisture hopping is where water vapor blows inland, falls as rain to the ground, and then is evapotranspired to blow further inland. Savenije found that a lot of the rainfall further inland had come from the coastal forests, and that as these forests had been chopped down, the rainfall decreased. [1]"

"Savenije’s student, Ruud van der Ent, modeled the flow of continental water moisture, and found that in South America the water moisture hopped from the North Atlantic ocean into the Amazon rainforests, then was turned southward by the Andes mountain, to hop into southeastern South America. 70% of the water above the Amazon forests ended up in southeastern South America. [2]


Van der Ent found that 80% of the rain in China had moisture hopped across the boreal forests of Scandinavia and Russia."

"Victor Gorshov and Anastasia Makarieva, two Russian atmospheric physicists have looked at the pattern of rainfall on continents. When there are not a continuous corridor of forests the rainfall decreases exponentially as one moves inland (see the D,E,F,G,H arrows in diagram below). When there are forests as in the Amazon in South America, the Congo rainforests in Africa, and the boreal forests of Russia, the rainfall does not decrease as one moves inland, it in fact increases slightly..."


"The forests and vegetation are creating a pathway for the rain to moisture hop inland via the small water cycle. The land is able to absorb the rainfall so that it can evapotranspire back up, to then blow further inland to create more rain. Vegetation also releases bacteria and fungi spores which float up into the air and help the water vapor nucleate into cloud droplets. The forests slow the wind down so that the water vapor has more chance to condense into rain. And the Biotic Pump hypothesis of Makarieva and Gorshov [4], theorizes that when the water vapor evapotranspired by forests condenses into clouds it creates a low pressure area that attracts more water vapor to blow in from the ocean." - https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/bio-rain-corridor


Solution

"In order to restore our rains further inland we need to restore the bio-rain corridor, a chain of vegetation that goes from the coast to further inland. Regreening our coastal cities, rewilding the area outside cities, restoring the various biomes can help decrease drought further inland. Depaving asphalt and concrete so that the earth can absorb rainfall aides the small water cycle." - https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/bio-rain-corridor

Ground Water Recharge

According to our growing understanding of tree roots and aquifers we are learning that "Intermediate Tree Cover Can Maximize Groundwater Recharge in the Seasonally Dry Tropics".

Bio Water Cycle via Animals

We often remember that animals are part of the nutrient cycle, but animals are also another overlooked part of the water cycle.

Consumption

Most animals from tiny insects to elephants and giraffes consume the majority of water by drinking, and to a lesser extent, via the foods they eat. Some species get most of their water from their diet, but this is often in drier regions, or species that rarely visit the ground.

Before humans intervened with the balance of nature, wildlife provided a huge proportion of biomass, which in turn amplified their ability to consume and transport water. 

However as you can see from this graph, human biomass now outweighs wild mammals and birds. In turn livestock outnumber as well as outweigh humans. 

This means that industrial farming has now taken hold of more biomass and associated water than all of humanity plus wild mammal and wild birds combined, displacing this vital water into the feed, bodies, manure lagoons, and livestock products, instead of nature where it can naturally cycle.

Displacement

As animals move around their biomes, or migrate to distant regions, they bring water in their bodies, which can be excreted in various ways, or returned to the ecosystem when they die, possibly into the soil, into the atmosphere if they dry, and/or to the organisms that consume them.

Though these are relatively small amounts of water distribution, much like nutrient redistribution, animals can help their ecosystems by visiting bodies of water or consuming plants in lush valleys, then traveling to drier locations with lower nutrition, and redistributing both water and nutrients to these higher/drier locations.

Historical documents describe migrations of plains mammals as turning the hills “black with buffalo as far as the eye could see.” and that migratory birds often turned the sky black with their numbers blocking out the sun (this still happens, but to a much smaller extent). 

By comparison, now, very few of these mammal herds still exist and those that do rarely roam freely. Similarly bird numbers have crashed thanks to domestic cats, hunting, pesticide use, light pollution, window crashes, and plastic pollution. Though we can't see easily see it, this is having an impact on water and nutrient transport around the world.

Farms & Industry vs The Water Cycle

Over Extraction

Virtual Water 

This is water used to produce products from lettuce to sky scrapers. Any time a product requires water to create, and is shipped to another location, this counts as moving "virtual water" even if there isn't particularly a lot of water in it. This is a big problem between places like India and the UK, where huge amounts of water are used to grow vegetables and rice in sunny India where rainfall is particularly precious, to rainy England where we could produce all our own crops if we didn't waste so many resources on livestock.

Biological Impacts

Deforestation

Agriculture, especially livestock, followed by industry are the main causes of deforestation. 

Pollution

Farms, industries, and government organizations not only dumped toxic chemicals into our water supplies, but have removed a lot of natural filters by hunting beavers to near extinction, poisoning birds that spread tree seeds, hunting herbivores that kept understories healthy and trapping or shooting the carnivores that helped keep all the other species in balance.

As a result our waterways are more polluted. Once-forested areas are being stripped of their soil and droughts are creeping over areas that once hosted rich wetlands. Places that are increasingly being destroyed by bigger and stronger wildfires have noticed that where species like beaver have managed to make a return have suffered little to no damage from the flames.

Water & Energy 

Humans have been using water for power for over 2,000 years dating back to the Greeks who used it to mill grains and Egyptians who irrigated with the screw wheel, more recently we started damming to produce hydroelectricity. More recent advances are harvesting tidal and wave energy, plus offshore wind offers an options which may have an even gentler ecological impact.

The problem  with dams is that they flood massive areas, creating deep, lightless lakes where species who evolved in shallow, fast moving water are not equipped to live in. Dams also cut of access to ancient spawning grounds which is driving important species such as salmon and eel closer to extinction.

Solutions

Reduce Consumption

This is probably the most important step, as "turning off the tap should come before mopping up the floor" as it were.

Restoring Icepacks & Glaciers

The highest points in our water cycle are being disrupted with decreased snowfall, and increasingly early melts. Some countries are turning to artificial snow production, covering existing icepacks or glaciers with insulative white cloth to prevent further melt, and even artificial glacier production.

Ice Stupas

Restoring Permeability

Species for Rewilding & Monitoring

Some species are major power horses of their biospheres, often doing a variety of important services that would cost us millions or more to replicate with technology. Some can also serve as indicators, meaning that their presence or absence from certain areas can give us vital information.

Keystone Species

Keystone species are those that help shape an environment in a way that many other species even the landscape itself can flourish. The might be hunters, food for other species, offer shelter or nesting materials, and often serve a myriad of functions to a variety of species.

This section will be updated with other species as we create resource pages about them, and with concrete ways that you or anyone can help them.

Click the Beaver button to learn more about how supporting, protecting, and (where they have been driven to extinction) reintroducing these keystone species can help prevent flooding, improve water quality, grow new forests, recharge ground water, and help boost biodiversity.

Indicator Species

Indicator species are ones that can only live in under certain conditions, and who indicate the healthiness of an eco system. This can include particularly picky plants who might change colour based on soil composition or disappear all together if conditions are not right. Important and wide-spread species such as the firefly used to be found on almost every continent, but due to light and chemical pollution, habitat destruction, being over harvested for festivals, science and medicine, as well as trampling from tourists, they've disappeared from places that were once famous for their presence.

This section will be updated with other species as we create resource pages about them, and with concrete ways that you or anyone can help them.

Click the Fireflies button to learn more about this fascinating group of insects, and what you can do to help them bounce back from the brink.

Tools & Apps

Water Pumping

The pumping of water takes a larger amount than many people realize. Pumping ground water for agricultural, industry, or public use, moving it between facilities, etc. all require energy since water is a fairly heavy substance.

Resources & Tools

Click here to see how much water has been withdrawn this year, how much water has been withdrawn over time, and which countries use how much water per capita.

Click the Plant-Based button for apps, calculators, food finders, recipe resources, documentaries and more.

Organizations

International

Africa

Asia

India

Maharashtra

Iraq

Europe

UK

North America

Canada

USA

California

Florida

Georgia

Maine

New York

North Carolina

Oregon

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

Texas

Maps

International

North America

USA

Oceana

Australia

Tasmania

Groups

North America

USA

Oceana

Australia

Grants & Funding

Asia

Oceana

Australia

Western Australia