BIOL 3450 Final: Ecology 3450 Condensed Lecture Notes.docx

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIOL 3450
• Professor: Andrew Robinson

Document Summary

We can see the loss of polar and glacial ice due to our injection of co2 into the atmosphere. 71% of the earth"s surface is covered in water, 97% of that is contained in the oceans. 0. 01% of water is consumable by humans as freshwater, 25% contained in canada. Where did water come from: volcanism: heat driven chemical reactions in the mantle interior of the earth combined hydrogen and oxygen to make water, continues to be released by volcanism. Approximately 0. 1%-0. 5% of the interior mantle is composed of water by weight. 3-16x the amount of water currently in the oceans. Volcanoes, active or not, release tons of gasses per day into the atmosphere. Magma is between 1%-5% dissolved gasses, 70% of which is water vapour. Volume of water expelled over 4 billion years is enough to fill the oceans x100: comet hypothesis: Comet delivery of water formed by interstellar processes.