EOSC 112 Midterm: Hydrosphere Review

• School: UBC
• Department: Earth and Ocean Sciences
• Course: EOSC 112
• Professor: Roger Francois

Document Summary

Systems made up of reservoirs and fluxes of material between the reservoirs. Reservoirs are places where matter resides temporarily (temporarily stored) Reservoirs are ocean, ice and snow, groundwater, lakes, river & streams and clouds and water vapour. Measured by the inventories (amount of water that resides in them) Fluxes describes the rate of transfer of water among the reservoirs through processes; it is expressed in mass or volume units transferred per unit time. Water leaves the ocean reservoir by evaporation, which puts water into the atmosphere as water vapor. The water vapour condenses into droplets that form clouds and are transported by wind while the water droplets fall on earth as rain or snow over the land or sea. Water fallen on land suns off via rivers and streams or percolate downward into the groundwater, or evaporate into the atmosphere again, or be taken up by vegetation, which will return the water to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration.