Note: this post has been updated on 31 December 2022. Scroll to the bottom.
The November-December 2022 issue of Water Resources IMPACT features an excellent article by AWRA Past President and Stantec water maven Lisa Beutler that deals with a new approach to integrating humans and their activities/infrastructure into the water/hydrologic cycle. You know - getting away from the depictions below (see G. Hornberger et al. Elements of Physical Hydrology, 2/e, Chapter 1).
Pretty sparse re: humans and their influence.
Something like this is more relevant (see here):
Here is Lisa's article:
Download Water Resources IMPACT November:December2022
The first two paragraphs:
Educators around the Nation now have access to a new tool to explain the Earth’s water cycle. Developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in consultation with more than 100 educators and more than 30 hydrologic experts, a new water cycle diagram replaces the one in use since 2000. Released in October 2022, the revised depiction brings humans into the picture and shows the water cycle as a complex interplay of small, interconnected cycles that people interact with and influence. Importantly it also shows how multiple ecosystems—including a coastal plain, dry basin, wet basin, and agricultural basin—are connected across watersheds and at continental scales
The earlier water cycle diagram, developed by Howard Pearlman and John Evans, introduced more than two decades of students, as well as readers of thousands of water publications, to the natural aspects of the water cycle. The 2022 version depicts how the Earth's water moves and is stored, both naturally and because of human actions. As Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, says, "So much about the water cycle is influenced by our actions, and it's important that we clearly see the role that each of us can play in sustainable water use amid a changing climate.”
Here are the new USGS water cycle diagrams, in English and Spanish. Example:
And here is my all-time favorite water cycle diagram - The Post-Modern Hydrologic (or hydrosocial) Cycle - drawn by friend and colleague Kate Ely, a member of the AWRA BoD and a hydrogeologist for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, which I posted on 20 December 2008:
Note added on 31 December 2022.
I forgot to mention a 'live' (pre-2020) presentation given by Dr. Jay Zarnetske of Michigan State University, a PhD graduate of Oregon State University. Jay spoke of a project in which he participated. It was international in scope and dealt with with how academics represented the water cycle in their countries. There were > 400 depictions. Here is a PDF of the paper, Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions, Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 533–540 (2019). Lots of good information.
Download S41561-019-0374-y
Enjoy!
"The hydrologic cycle s it occurs today - water flows to money." - Kate Ely
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