A: Approximately 72%-75% of the earth is covered by water.
Because water covers three-quarters of the earth's surface, it might appear
that there is plenty to go around and that we will never run out of this
valuable resource. In reality, however, we have a limited amount of usable
fresh water. Over 97 percent of the earth's water is found in the oceans as
salt water. Two percent of the earth's water is stored as fresh water in
glaciers, ice caps, and snowy mountain ranges. That leaves only one percent
of the earth's water available to us for our daily water supply needs.
Our fresh water supplies are stored either in the soil (aquifers) or bedrock
fractures beneath the ground (ground water) or in lakes, rivers, and streams
on the earth's surface (surface water).We use fresh water for a variety of
purposes. Agricultural uses represent the largest consumer of fresh water,
about 42 percent.Approximately 39 percent of our fresh water is used for the
pro-duction of electricity; 11 percent is used in urban and rural
homes,offices, and hotels; and the remaining 8 percent is used in
manu-facturing and mining activities.
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