Page 11 - Water Every Drop Counts

Closely related to the word river is ri-
val, originally “one who uses the same
stream (or ‘one on the opposite side
of the stream’)” ... the notion is of the
competitiveness of neighbors.

– the Online Etymology Dictionary

China’s Yangtze River
powers the Three Gorges
Dam, unequaled in
hydroelectric generating
capacity. Another
monumental project is
now under way to divert
Sediment carried from water from the Yangtze
the Himalayas and the to China’s dry, populous
Tibetan Plateau creates north. There, the Yellow
some of the world’s River, drawn down for
largest river deltas, irrigation and industry,
including the Indus, the often fails to reach the
Mekong, and the great sea.
delta where the Ganges
meets the Brahmaputra
River system. Worldwide,
deltas are home to an
estimated 500 million
people.

The world’s longest Ten Longest Rivers
river, the Nile, and 1. Nile (Africa) 7081 km
Africa’s equatorial 2. Amazon (South America) 6679 km
colossus, the 3. Yangtze (Asia) 6244 km
Congo, both rise in 4. Mississippi-Missouri (North America) 6083 km
the highlands where 5. Yenisey-Angara (Asia) 5810 km
Africa’s greatest 6. Yellow (Asia) 5778 km
lakes fill parts of the 7. Amur (Asia) 5540 km
Great Rift Valley. 8. Ob-Irtysh (Asia) 5520 km
The Congo, its 9. Lena (Asia) 5149 km
volume second to 10. Congo (Africa) 5118 km
that of the Amazon,
is the only major
river that crosses the
Equator twice. The Water Below
Most of the planet’s liquid fresh water is
groundwater, precipitation that seeps down
to fill the spaces in layers of sand, gravel and
permeable rock called aquifers. Groundwater
exists almost everywhere, at varying depths.
Since the mid-20th century, its extraction
for human use has accelerated, often at
unsustainable rates. How readily groundwater
recharges depends on precipitation, geology
and topography. Groundwater can emerge as
a spring, the start of many rivers and for some
Almost 70 percent of Earth’s fresh a major contributor. Up to 40 percent of the
water is frozen in ice sheets, volume of the Mississippi River is estimated to
glaciers, permanent snow cover come from groundwater.
and permafrost� Antarctica holds
about 90 percent of that water, Groundwater recharge
with most of the rest locked up on
Greenland�
Very Moderate Very
High Low
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