Water Resources Management Flashcards

Flashcards on key concepts from the Water Resources Management lecture.

What is Water Resource Management?

The activity of planning, developing, and managing the optimum use of water resources.

Water resource management is a subset of what?

A sub-set of water cycle management.

Which water resource may be depleted over time?

Groundwater.

What are the two general classifications of water use?

Agriculture and municipal/industrial.

Agricultural use of water is generally classified as what?

Consumptive.

What is a significant exception to the non-consumptive classification of municipal and industrial water uses?

Lawn watering.

What factors have contributed to the stress on water resources around the world?

Population growth, increased affluence, the spread of irrigated agriculture, and urbanization.

Water Resources Management (WRM) is for what generations?

Present and future generations.

What is Water?

A chemical substance which at room temperature is in liquid form, transparent, colourless, and odourless.

What are the three forms/states of water?

Solid (ice), liquid (water), and gas (water vapour/steam).

What is a Resource?

Anything that has value to human beings.

What are some examples of water resources?

Surface rivers, lakes, wells, waterfalls, swamps, ice caps, oceans, groundwater and wetlands.

What is Management?

The skillful handling or use of something such as resources.

What is much effort in water resource management directed at?

Optimizing the use of water and in minimizing the environmental impact of water use on the natural environment.

Which sector is the largest user of the world's freshwater resources?

Agriculture.

What are the two types of water scarcity?

Physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity.

What are the six points in the plan for solving the world's water problems?

Improve data related to water, treasure the environment, reform water governance, revitalize agricultural water use, manage urban and industrial demand, empower the poor and women in water resource management.

What is a megacity?

A city or urban area with more than 10 million inhabitants.

What are some barriers that can be created against contamination in the food production process in the 'multiple-barrier approach'?

introducing safer irrigation practices; promoting on-farm wastewater treatment; taking actions that cause pathogens to die off; and effectively washing crops after harvest in markets and restaurants.

What is an important step in the sustainability of water resources?

Finding a balance between what is needed by humans and what is needed in the environment.