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Out of all the water on Earth, saline water in oceans, seas and saline groundwater make up about 97% of it. Only 2.5–2.75% is fresh water, including 1.75–2% frozen in glaciers, ice and snow, 0.5–0.75% as fresh groundwater and soil moisture, and less than 0.01% of it as surface water in lakes, swamps and rivers.
Most water in Earth's atmosphere and crust comes from saline seawater, while fresh water accounts for nearly 1% of the total. The vast bulk of the water on Earth is saline or salt water, with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 3.5%, roughly equivalent to 34 grams of salts in 1 kg of seawater), though this varies slightly according to the amount of runoff received from surrounding land.
As the name implies, water is held in reserve by a reservoir so it can serve a purpose. For example, in Thailand, reservoirs tend to store water from the wet season to prevent flooding, then release it during the dry season for farmers to grow rice. For this type of reservoir, almost the entire volume of the reservoir functions for the purpose ...
Longest freshwater lake in the world and third largest of any kind by volume. [18] 7: Baikal Russia: Fresh 31,722 km 2 12,248 sq mi 636 km 395 mi 1,642 m 5,387 ft 23,610 km 3 5,660 cu mi Deepest lake in the world and largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. [19] 8: Great Bear Lake Canada: Fresh 31,153 km 2 12,028 sq mi 373 km 232 mi 446 m
In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's twelfth-largest known lake by volume, at 1,100 km 3 (260 cu mi). However, by 2007 it had shrunk to 10% of its original volume and was divided into three lakes, none of which are large enough to appear on this list. [17]
The Thirty Thousand Islands are the world's largest freshwater archipelago, and are located mainly along the east side of Georgian Bay, part of the Great Lakes, in Ontario, Canada. [1] [2] Biosphere map of Georgian Bay. UNESCO designated the area in 2004 as the Georgian Bay Littoral (also called the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve). It is an ...
Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. These resources can be either freshwater from natural sources, or water produced artificially from other sources, such as from reclaimed water or desalinated water (). 97% of the water on Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh ...
Fresh water can easily become polluted by human activities or due to naturally occurring processes, such as erosion. Fresh water makes up less than 3% of the world's water resources, and just 1% of that is readily available. About 70% of the world's freshwater reserves are frozen in Antarctica. Just 3% of it is extracted for human consumption.