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Urban water cycle and services
Published in Thomas Bolognesi, Francisco Silva Pinto, Megan Farrelly, Routledge Handbook of Urban Water Governance, 2023
Francisco Silva Pinto, Thomas Bolognesi, Christopher Gasson
To frame the discussion on the interactions of water-human systems(e.g., water uses and related services), it is useful to take advantage of existing heuristic/conceptual representations. Thus, one may use the hydrological cycle (i.e., in broad terms, also known as the water cycle) to represent the material flow of water on our planet, i.e., through the biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere (Sivapalan, 2018). This overall cycle has mainly two components that define the water flow between those spheres in all its states of matter (e.g., liquid, solid, gas): (1) movement and (2) storage. Those two components define the basis of water balance throughout the planet. The resulting water availability, in terms of accessible quantity and quality, constrains the possible water uses of the human population and, thus, the inherent services. Those services include water supply, wastewater collection and management, drainage, and recreation, among others (Jenerette & Larsen, 2006). If we consider the integration of these services in the water cycle, and its application to densely populated, built-up developed areas, while keeping the cycle's conceptual structure, we can characterize an urban water cycle (UWC). Figure 1.1 schematizes a possible representation of a UWC.
Introduction to Watershed Management
Published in Sandeep Samantaray, Abinash Sahoo, Dillip K. Ghose, Watershed Management and Applications of AI, 2021
Sandeep Samantaray, Abinash Sahoo, Dillip K. Ghose
Hydrologic cycle is an important process of natural world to transport water from oceans to atmosphere, to global land, and back to sea. All of world's water is subjected to be controlled by this procedure, which enables water to alter its form, location, and availability. This cycle is also identified as global water cycle that defines storage and movement of water among the lithosphere biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. Water is evaporated through atmosphere by sunrays, merged into clouds as water vapour, condensed and drops to the land in the form of precipitation, and then goes back to atmosphere through multiple hydrologic processes. Hydrologic cycle is defined in terms of some main constituents: precipitation (P), infiltration (I), evaporation (E), transpiration (T), surface runoff (R), evapotranspiration (ET), groundwater flow (G), and storage. This process is simple enough; however, there are a few steps of breakdown for hydrologic cycle (Ramanathan et al., 2001; Held and Soden, 2006). The processes are as shown in Figure 1.1.
Our Environment
Published in Karlheinz Spitz, John Trudinger, Mining and the Environment, 2019
Karlheinz Spitz, John Trudinger
The hydrologic cycle is a conceptual model that describes the storage and movement of water between the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and the hydrosphere. Water on Earth can be stored in any one of the following media (Figure 8.4): atmosphere, oceans, surface waters, soils, glaciers, snowfields, and groundwater. Water moves from one medium to another by way of natural processes such as evaporation, condensation precipitation, runoff, infiltration, transpiration, melting, and groundwater flow. In areas where water is scarce or human population is high, human activities can change the local natural hydrologic cycle. It is now also widely accepted that industrialization including mining has contributed to climate change, which is associated with notable shifts in the global hydrologic cycle.
Synthesis of the ICESat/ICESat-2 and CryoSat-2 observations to reconstruct time series of lake level
Published in International Journal of Digital Earth, 2023
Ye Feng, Leiku Yang, Pengfei Zhan, Shuangxiao Luo, Tan Chen, Kai Liu, Chunqiao Song
Lakes play an essential role in the terrestrial hydrosphere and serve various functions such as regulating regional climate, supplying water resources, and maintaining ecological balance (Tang et al. 2019; Woolway and Merchant 2019; Zhang et al. 2013; Zhou et al. 2022). The world has over 1.42 million lakes and reservoirs larger than 10 hectares, covering approximately 1.8% of the global land surface area (Khazaei et al. 2022; Messager et al. 2016; Meyer et al. 2020; Yao 2020). Given their sensitive response to climate change and human activity, lakes are also often known as sentinels of earth environments (Adrian et al. 2009). Their water level is a direct indicator of lake water budgets (Adrian et al. 2009; Legesse, Vallet-Coulomb, and Gasse 2004). Traditionally, lake levels are measured through in situ gauge stations (Duan and Bastiaanssen 2013). However, these observations of spatiotemporal variations are commonly limited due to the harsh environments and logistics conditions of many lakes in remote areas (Lei et al. 2018; Qiao et al. 2019a). Even the number of lake level gauge stations has decreased in recent years (Calmant, Seyler, and Cretaux 2008; Crétaux and Birkett 2006; Ghiggi et al. 2021; Lu et al. 2010). Remote sensing provides a practical tool for monitoring the spatial and temporal dynamics of large-scale surface water (Lu et al. 2017; Qiao et al. 2019b; Tang et al. 2022; Yang et al. 2016; Yang et al. 2022). Since the 1990s, satellite altimetry has been gradually used to monitor the water levels of large water bodies (Duan and Bastiaanssen 2013). Thus far, over 20 altimetry satellites have been launched. Satellite altimetry has become an effective approach for monitoring water level changes in open water bodies (Duan and Bastiaanssen 2013; Schumann et al. 2022; Zhang, Chen, and Xie 2019). More and more studies use satellite radar altimetry data to estimate changes in lake water levels (Crétaux et al. 2016; Jiang et al. 2017b; Li et al. 2019; Song, Huang, and Ke 2015; Xu et al. 2022).