To study the impact of human intervention on the water the source or water ecosystem in your area what is the proposed for importance of the activity .
Answers
Answer:
I hope you like this answer don't forget to make me branliest
Explanation:
101: Effects of Human Activities on Water Quality
NORMAN E PETERS¹, MICHEL MEYBECK² AND DEBORAH V CHAPMAN3³
'US Geological Survey, Atlanta, GA, US 2. University of Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France ³ Environmental Research Institute and Department of Zoology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Water quality comprises the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of a water body. The water body acquires these characteristics from a suite of complex interactions among the water, atmosphere, soils. and lithology. Human activities affect both water quality and quantity. Human activities change land use and land cover, which changes the water balance and usually changes the relative importance of processes that control water quality. Furthermore, most human activities generate waste ranging from gases to concentrated radioactive wastes. Although each issue can be subdivided into a myriad of individual processes or activities, the primary water-quality issues affected by human activities include organic material, trace elements (heavy metals), acidic atmospheric deposition and runoff, salinization, nutrients (primarily nitrogen and phosphorus) pathogenic agents including bacterial pathogens, enteric viruses, and protozoans, suspended sediment, oil and grease, synthetic organic compounds, thermal pollution, exotic and invasive species, pesticides and herbicides. and radioactivity. In addition to the various issues, each human activity has a potential cyclical and cascading effect on water quality and quantity along hydrologic pathways. The degradation of water quality in one part of a watershed can have negative effects on users downstream; the timescale of effects is determined by the residence time of that substance along various hydrological pathways. An extremely important factor is that substances added to the atmosphere, land, and water generally have relatively long timescales for removal or cleanup. The nature of the substance, including its affinity for adhering to soil and its ability to be transformed, affect the mobility and the timescale for the removal of the substance and its effects on water quality, for example, biota.
INTRODUCTION
354 Human activities alter the natural characteristics of air, land, and water, which subsequently affect water quality. Prior to and immediately after World War II, the main water contamination problems in developed countries were fecal and organic pollution from untreated human waste and the by-products of early industries, particularly in urban areas. Through improved waste treatment and disposal during the past few decades, developed countries have addressed this problem resulting in water-quality improvements. Most of this has been accomplished through pollution laws and pollution-control technologies, particularly with respect to point sources such as factories and sewage treatment plants.
Prior to wastes being treated, the management philosophy was essentially that dilation is the solution to pollution, which still persists in many areas of the world.
Human activities can affect water quality directly and indirectly. Direct effects are those that change water quality through the addition of some chemical constituent, physical characteristic, or biological component. The discharge of wastewater to a stream directly affects the stream chemistry, the application and leaching of fertilizer affects groundwa ter chemistry that can affect surface water by groundwater discharge, and the combustion of fossil-fuel, including coal, oil, and wood plus forest fires (biomass burning), affects air quality. The air quality affects precipitation, chemistry, and the water quality of the receiving water bodies. Increasing
Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences. Edited by M. Anderson. © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.