Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Water Resources

Fresh water availability and conservation of surface water resources are basic tohuman survival. The hydrological cycle is greatly influenced by changing land use and land cover in India. The large-scale deforestation may cause significant changes in regional and global climate. The rainfall variability in both time and space makes wateravailability and plant productivity quite uncertain. India has more than 60 per cent of itsland under rainfed areas, difficult to manage in a sustainable manner. With growingurban impact on groundwater, supply of fresh water is getting contaminated. Recentstudies indicate degradation of the water resource in the Himalaya resulting from erosion, flooding (Singh and Singh, 2007), and scarcity of water and degrading water quality (Singh, 2004). In geography, monitoring and manipulating experiments are required to study in situ for understanding of the hydrological processes and their interaction. Literature related to watershed management, micro-watershed, integrated water resource management and different tools and techniques related to water conservation have been reviewed (Mushir and Khan, 2007; Singh and Bortamuly, 2005).

United States & Canada

This unit covers just two countries in North America: the United States and Canada. The  continent of North America actually includes many more countries, of course—it extends all the  way to the border between Panama and Colombia and includes the islands of the Caribbean as well. We’ll be covering all of those countries in the next unit on Latin America.

Most students find this unit on the United States and Canada to be the easiest unit in the course (in sharp contrast to Unit 1 on Planet Earth, which most students find to be one of the more challenging units). There are a couple of factors that make Unit 2 especially easy to master: it includes the fewest countries of any unit in the course, and it focuses on one country— the United States—that most students are likely to be fairly familiar with already. Chances are that at some point in your academic career (probably by sixth grade at the latest!), you’ve already been required to commit the fifty states to memory. All you’re doing in this unit, then, is simply adding a little polish to the knowledge you already have.

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