|
|
|
TROPICAL RAINFORESTS: Disappearing Opportunities
|
|
About this site
Providing tropical forest news, statistics, photos, and information, rainforests.mongabay.com is the world's most popular rainforest site. [more] |
|
|
|
Freshwater Availability
70% of Earth's surface is water of which 97.5% is salt water and 2.5% is freshwater. Less than 1% of this 2.5%
amount of freshwater is accessible (the majority is frozen in ice caps or exists as soil moisture). Below is a
further breakdown of freshwater use and availability.
- about 110,000 cubic km of precipitation fall on the world's continents
each year, most of which is absorbed by plants and/or evaporated back into the atmosphere
- 42,700 cubic km of this precipitation flow through river (the Amazon
carrier 16% of global runoff)
- 9,000 cubic km of freshwater are readily accessible for human use
- another 3,500 cubic km are captured and stored in dams and reserviors
We currently use about 50% of the world's readily available water.
Continued: Extinction
Unless otherwise specified, this article was written by Rhett A. Butler [Bibliographic citation for this page]
Other pages in this section:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recent news
Amazon deforestation rate falls to lowest on record
(8/10/2007) Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon for the previous year were the lowest on record, according to preliminary figures released by INPE, Brazil's National Institute of Space Research.
Lowland rainforest less diverse than previously thought
(8/9/2007) While rainforests are the world's libraries of biodiversity, species richness may be more evenly distributed in some forests than in others, reports an extensive new study by an international team of entomologists and botanists. The work, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, has important implications for forest management and conservation strategies.
Experts: parks effectively protect rainforest in Peru
(8/9/2007) High-resolution satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest in Peru shows that land-use and conservation policies have had a measurable impact on deforestation rates. The research is published in the August 9, 2007, on-line edition of Science Express.
More rainforest news
|
|
|
