Geoactive Questions Part II

List the main reasons for water scarcity.

Very low rain fall, population growth, agriculture, pollution and global warming which causes many climate changes
a)What is a drought?

A long period of time when there is less than average rainfall.

b)What type of hardships do you think that a drought could cause if were living in a village in a poor country such as Ethiopia?

People would have no water supply, it would be very hot, crops would die and people and life stock will also die. There will will be a famine and land will dry up.
How does land degradation affect the supply of fresh water?

It stops fresh water water going into the soil, and instead all the rain water will directly flow into rivers and lakes. Also the rain water will take away the top soil and you will have erosion
a) What is El Nino ?

The warming up of the SouthernEastern Tropical Pacific Ocean.

b)Why does El Nino often cause drought in Australia?

The clouds and rain storms that come come with warm oceans also go towards the east. With the result of rains which would normally fall over Australia start falling over the dessert in Peru. This causes forest fires and drought in the Western Pacific and flooding in South America.
Observe the map showing the global effects of El Nino in 1982-83.

a)What effects does El Nino have on the availability of fresh water? The countries

where there is a drought the fresh water supply will run on reserves and might run out. But in the regions where there is more rain than average the aquifer will fill up, but floods will probably also happen and cause salt water intrusion.

b) Name the countries and describe the problems that arose from decreased rainfall caused by El Nino ?

Indonesia : many forest fires and clearance of tropical forest causing very high air pollution levels. Singapore & Malaysia : air polution due to burning of tropical forest. Philippines : lower rice harvest following drought. China : agricultural land under threat from drought in Northern regions and flooding in Southern regions. Papua New Guinea : Drought related failure of food crops, leading to famine conditions requiring food aid. Africa : reduced corn crop in Sub-Saharan region. Australia : wheat exports threatened by drought across grain growing areas and mostly in New`South Wales

Geoactive Questions

1.What percentage of the world's supply of water is fresh water? 2.5 % of the world's water supply is fresh water.
2.Where is the world's supply of fresh water found? The world's supply of fresh water is in ice, underground, soil, rivers and lakes.
3.Even though the supply of fresh water is abundant it is still a problem. Why? The reasons water is abundant and is still a problem is because the people and the water on earth is not evenly spaced out.
4.Observe the map of world average annual precipitation (opposite).
a)Describe the changes in rainfall that occur as you move from the southern to the northern tip of Africa. If you start at the southern tip of Africa the annual precipitation is different, but if you were looking at Africa from the West to the East at the Northern tip the West gets less rainfall than the East. As you move up the rain becomes more, then at half way it goes the opposite.
b)Describe the changes in rainfall that occur as you move from the Western to the Eastern tip of Australia along the Tropic of Capricorn. At the East the annual precipitation is at 1000-1500 (mm), and as you move to the West the annual precipitation goes down.
5. Observe the map above of water availability per person.
a) Which parts of the world appear to have a large amount of water available per person? The Northern part of South America, the Northern part of North America, the Northern and Western part of Australia, the Northern part of Asia, the Western part of Africa, and the Northern part of Europe are are the places that appear to have a large amounts of water per person.
b)Which parts of the world appear to have a small amount of water per person? The Northern, Eastern part of North America, the Southern part of Asia, the Southern part of Australia, the Northern part of Africa, and the Southern part of Europe are the places that appear to have a small amount of water per person.
6. Observe the diagram of water use.
a) What are the main uses of water? The main uses for water are Agricultural and Industrial
b) Which uses have increased the most over the last century? The uses of water that have increased in the last century are Reservoir losses from evaporation and seepage and Community.

Bintaro Lama Video

Water Treatment Plant

On November 12th 2009 My class and I went on a field trip to Aetra, a water treatment plant. We learned lots of things there. Everyone else in LC 1 was there too, but we were all scattered around in different places.

Stage 1: Remove the garbage from the river water through coarse and fine filters.
First, you had to remove the garbage using a coarse filter. The water that was filtered came in from a river nearby the plant. You could see water coming in and the big pieces of garbage getting trapped as the water flowed through this big thing that looked like a gate with huge tremors. Our class was lucky because we got to see this big claw looking thing pick up the garbage. After the coarse filter, the water went through some fine filters which were placed in these big blue storage keepers. There were big holes in them so you could look down and see the water getting filtered. One thing I noticed was that there were small snails and crabs in there and I was wondering what happened to them.

Stage 2: Add in chemicals and stir to create floc. Flocculation
The name of the stage pretty much explains what was happening. When they added in the chemicals into a big rectangle pool you could already see floc up at the top beginning to clump up together. We later learned that the floc wasn't just thrown away it was used for something. I can't exactly remeber what but it was something to do with bricks :) (I think they make it into bricks).

Stage 3: Allow sediment and floc to settle at the bottom.
When they are done stirring the chemicals in they wait for a while like 4 hours to let the floc settle at the bottom of the pool. There were around 8 pools and they all had this hole in the side of them leading into a small channel which leads into a resvoir.

Stage 4: The water is filtered through on meter of sand.
Before the water from Stage 3 is entered into a resvoir, they filter it again through sand. The sand is very specific sand, the grains all have to be very fine and they all have to be the same size. There is added more chlorine to the water and then it is sent to the resvoir.

Stage 5: Disinfectants are added.
Here, they put in lots of chemicals that you couldn't see into the water. The disinfectants are added to--once again-- make sure the water is clean. People have to be very careful because you can a disease called chlora from driniking dirty water.

Stage 6: Testing is done to make sure water is clean and safe to drink.
In this stage, they have to make sure the water is potable (safe to drink). In the lab, they do lots of testing on turbidity and the PH level. If the water isn't potable they have to add more disinfectants to make in potable.

On this trip I learned a lot. I thought the most interesting part was the flocculation stage becuase it was kind of cool to see how much dirt there is in normal river water.

Bintaro Lama

On Thursday last week, I went to Bintaro Lama with Mrs. Whiteley's class. Bintaro Lama is one of the many villages that WatSan Action helps. WatSan action is a company started by a student from JIS, that helps small villages get clean and fresh water.

The 1st station I went to was "water turbidity". There was a lady there who showed us how to check if water was clean using this tube. The tube had either a cross or a circle at the end of it. For the water to be clean, you had to fill the tube up and when you look down you should be able to see the cross or circle, if you couldn't that means the water is dirty.

The 2nd station I went to was the "sand filter". There we learned about how a sand filter was built and used. It was made up of 5 cm rough rocks, 10 cm fine rocks and 50 cm sand the other 30 cm was filled with water that had to be filtered. The water filter works by trapping all the bacteria and dirt in the fine sand the rocks are there just to make sure that the water is filtered enough.

The last station I went to was the "water disinfection". There was a lady there who went through the steps of disinfecting water with the sun. What shocked me the most was that during the rainy season the water might have to stay out for over 24 hours in the sun instead of the usual 6 hours.

My Poem

Water Cycle Pics

1.Evaporation is when there is water on the groun and the heat warm enough so the water is boilingish and then it rises up into the air

2. Precipitation is when the water that has evaporated meet cold and warm air and they mix to create clouds

2. Infiltration is when the water soaks into the ground.

4. Precipitationis when all the water is gathered together in a cloud and the cloud can't hold anymore water so it releases all the water.