Date Posted: 3/23/2018 11:39:01 AM
Posted By: franco crick Membership Level: Gold Total Points: 2067
Hydrological cycle is also referred to as water cycle. Water cycle is the movement of water through the water bodies such as lakes, seas, rivers/streams and oceans passing through the atmosphere by processes such as transpiration and evaporation and lastly the water falls on ground surface as rain where percolation, infiltration and groundwater seepage occurs.This cycle repeats itself in a continuous way without an end. Once on the ground evaporation may occur from the surface or from plants releasing moisture/water vapor into the atmosphere.The released water vapor rising above when heated and later meets condensation nuclei such as aerosols and other solid particles that facilitates condensation process.The water droplets forms around the condensation nuclei forming ring-like structures around it until a large water droplet is formed which attains a higher terminal velocity brought about by the balancing drag force and gravity forces exerted on to the object and in this case the large water droplets formed as a process of condensation.The process is mainly as a result of coalescence and fragmenting of cloud particles. This is later followed by strong winds occurring leading to blowing of moist clouds from one place to another causing the falling of water droplets as rain on top of mountains forming snow at the mountain peaks.the snow formed melts as ice or glaciers causing surface runoff which is defined as amount of all precipitation fallen on to the ground minus the deductions lost through evaporation, percolation, underground seepage and flow and infiltration. The runoff occurrence causes percolation of water into deeper soil layers and also interception of water in the soil.Once the water reaches the deeper layers it is absorbed by plants and later almost all the water absorbed by plants is lost into atmosphere through transpiration process mainly through stomata structures.This contributes to continued increase of water vapor into atmosphere through excretion by plants. The groundwater continues flowing through three types of flows namely;inter flows which is the flow between the soil pores, underground flows and deep underground flows.Some of the water undergoing flow may be stored in aquifers and others may later emerge inform of springs that directs it water inform of small streams which drains into other water bodies such as rivers, oceans, lakes ans seas.This marks the end of water cycle and the beginning of the next cycle. Within this hydrological cycle, there are three of its processes used as principles of water renewal within our environment and which ensures availability of adequate water to organisms under favorable conditions.These processes are:a)Transpiration a process by which water is lost into the atmosphere by plants in form of water vapor through special structure such as lenticells, stomata and cuticle.b)Evaporation is also a principle of water renewal a process of transformation of water vapor from liquid state into gaseous state.c)Precipitation is any form of moisture that falls down in either liquid form or solid form(ice) or in other forms such as hail,fog or mist.
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