SavingH20

Water Cycle

The water cycle starts when the sun’s radiation heats up the water. The heat turns it to water vapor and it evaporates it to clouds. In the clouds the water vapor turns back to water, this is call condensation and when the cloud has too much water, gravity pulls it out to rain, snow, hail or sleet, this is called precipitation. This runoff water goes to the nearest drainage basin of lower elevation like in lakes, rivers, and oceans to becomes surface water, and if not in the oceans already, it will go to the ocean or if the rain, hail, snow or sleet lands on the ground it will soak into the ground and become groundwater. Then this repeats.

 

Drainage Basin

A drainage basin is the place the water goes after it rains and it is created because water moves to lower elevations and there are divides in the land (hills and ridges). As you can see in the picture all the water ends off in Lake Ontario. In the water cycle, some water might go to a waterland where it is held there for long periods of time to settle particles to the bottom and make lighter particles float to the top, making the water clean (we use this method to clean water in York Region Wastewater Treatment ).

 

Carbon Cycle

The Carbon Cycle explains why we have Global Warming and it is stored in biosphere of living or dead organisms, as gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as organic matter in soil, as fossil fuels and as sedimentary rocks like limestone, chalk and dolomite, dissolved in the ocean called atmospheric carbon dioxide and calcium carbonate shells in marine life. All of this Carbon dioxide traps the sun's heat on the earth by creating a greenhouse effect and humans are not helping because we burn so much fossil fuels, that there is 30% more carbon dioxide is in the air 150 years ago. Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and it is destroying our earth.