Little of Earth’s Water is Usable in Everyday Life

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

Picture of Earth showing if all Earth's water (liquid, ice, freshwater, saline) was put into a sphere it would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter. Diameter would be about the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA.
Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Howard Perlman, USGS.

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - May 9, 2012

Very little of Earth’s water is usable in everyday life; about 96 percent of water on Earth is saline; of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers; another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground; rivers are the source of most of the fresh surface water people use, but they only constitute about 300 mi³ (1,250 km³), about 1/10,000th of one percent of total water

How much water exists on, in, and above Earth?

About 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth’s water. Water also exists in the air as water vapor, in rivers and lakes, in icecaps and glaciers, in the ground as soil moisture and earth aquifers.

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