EESC07H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Water Cycle, Lake Ontario, Integrated Water Resources Management
13 Feb 2018
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Document Summary
Then imagine a 10 ml syringe taking water from the 1l, this represents all the lake water in the world. Now imagine a dropper that carries 1/10th of a millilitre, this represents all the rivers in the world. Everything left (~97%) of that 1l is groundwater. Residence time represents the time that water particle (on average) spends in a particle compartment of the hydrological cycle. Generally speaking, it is proportional to the volume of the storage: large volume = high r. t. (vice versa), e. g. an average water particle in lake ontario has a r. t. of ~8 years. This is important because when you deal with pollution, they dissolve in the water. So when there is an event, and the r. t. of a specific body of water, you can determine how long it will take for the contaminant to move out of the body.
