Water and its conservation

Water:

• Water is a vital renewable natural resource.
• Three-fourth of the Earth’s surface is covered with water
• Water cannot be added or deducted from Earth. Its total volume remains constant.
• The abundance of water only seems to vary because it is in constant motion through the process of the water cycle
• The seas cover 66% of the Earth’s surface and back a rich assortment of plant and animal life
• Freshwater availability is  just around 2.7%, of which  almost 70% of this remains non-usable as ice sheets and icy masses in Antarctica, Greenland, and mountain locales

• Just 1% of freshwater is accessible and is available for human use, which is found as groundwater, surface water in waterways and lakes, and water vapor in the environment

Problems with Water Availability:

1. Nations situated in dry climatic zones are generally exposed to issues of water shortage. Consequently, scarcity of water might be a result of variation in occasional or yearly precipitation, or the shortage is brought about by overuse and defilement of water sources.
2. Increasing population, rising need for food and cash crops, expanding urbanisation, and ways of life are the main considerations prompting deficiencies in the supply of freshwater either due to vanishing of water sources or water defilement.
3. Pollution and over utilisation of available resources have led to scarcity of water even in areas that were once abundant in the availability of water.
4. Variation in rainfall patterns throughout the world due to the prominent effect of climate change also affects the distribution of water among various countries.

Major Reasons for pollution of water:

• Discharging of untreated or to some extent treated sewage
• horticultural synthetic substances 
• modern effluents in water bodies
• Domestic, agricultural and industrial effluents
• Contamination of land resources in turn leads to contamination of water bodies

Methods of conserving water resources: 

1. Water Treatment: Water contamination can be reduced by treating these effluents reasonably before delivering them to water bodies.
2. Vegetation cover: Vegetation cover helps in slowing down the surface spillover and it also renews underground water. 
3. Water Harvesting: Water harvesting is one more strategy to save surface water from spillover.
4. Use of modern irrigation methods such as proper construction of irrigation canals to reduce water seepage, use of sprinklers and drip irrigation in dry regions, etc.

Conclusion

Water is among one of the most important resources. It is important to conserve water and save it for the future so as to maintain the ecological balance of the earth. It essentially is a driving force that assists life on earth and hence needs to be conserved.