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Water
cycle is, simply saying, the circulation of
water in earth. In fact, the water in the
earth's biosphere is used and reused again and
again. This is called water cycle or
continuous movement of water between the earth
and the atmosphere. It involves the following
mechanisms:
-
Evaporation:
changing of water from liquid to gas
-
Transpiration:
Release of water vapor from plant leaves
-
Condensation:
changing of vapor to liquid (cooled down)
-
Precipitation:
Water that returns to the earth (water droplets
in clouds become large enough and there
comes the rain).
What's
the relation of water cycle and pollution?
According
to the water cycle, naturally, water around us will be absorbed to the
land (soil) and rivers will stream from
the upstream to the downstream and
released to the sea. In normal
situation organic pollutants are biodegraded by
microbes and converted to a form that brings
benefits to the aquatic life. And for the
inorganic pollutants, in the same situation,
don't bring to much hazards because they are
widely dispersed and have almost no effect to
the environment which they are released to.
In
a small scale, both inorganic and organic
pollutants safely decompose throughout the
stream, their concentration decrease in the sea,
and they don't harm the sea
ecosystem and its distribution. But in
an excessive scale, communities in
beach and estuary will be affected by
the pollutants, and can heavily harm
them.
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