The Importance of Hydrosphere

          
     As far as we know, the Earth we live on is the only planet that is able to support life. Amongst other factors, Earth is just the right distance from the sun to have temperatures that are suitable for life to exist. Also, the Earth's atmosphere has exactly the right type of gases in the right amounts for life to survive. Our planet also has water on its surface, which is something very unique. In fact, Earth is often called the 'Blue Planet' because most of it is covered in water. This water is made up of freshwater in rivers and lakes, the saltwater of the oceans and estuaries, groundwater and water vapor. Together, all these water bodies are called the hydrosphere.

•Atmosphere
When water is heated (e.g. by energy from the sun), it evaporates and forms water vapor. When water vapor cools again, it condenses to form liquid water which eventually returns to the surface by precipitation e.g. rain or snow. This cycle of water moving through the atmosphere and the energy changes that accompany it, is what drives weather patterns on earth.

•Lithosphere
In the lithosphere, water is an important weathering agent, which means that it helps to break rock down into rock fragments and then soil. These fragments may then be transported by water to another place, where they are deposited. This is called erosion. These two process, i.e. weathering and erosion, help to shape the earth's surface. You can see this for example in rivers. In the upper streams, rocks are eroded and sediments are transported down the river and deposited on the wide flood plains lower down. On a bigger scale, river valleys in mountains have been carved out by the action of water, and cliffs and caves on rocky beach coastlines are also the result of weathering and erosion by water

•Biosphere
In the biosphere, land plants absorb water through their roots and then transport this through their vascular (transport) system to stems and leaves. This water is needed in photosynthesis, the food production process in plants. Transpiration (evaporation of water from the leaf surface) then returns water back to the atmosphere

                         Water is a part of living cells each cell in a living organism this allows the cell to function normally. Humans use water in a number of ways. Drinking water is obviously very important .As we mentioned earlier, water is seldom pure. Because of the structure of the water molecule, it is able to dissolve substances in it. This is very important because if water wasn't able to do this, life would not be able to survive. In rivers and the oceans for example, dissolved oxygen means that organisms (such as fish) are still able to respire (breathe). For plants, dissolved nutrients are also available. In the human body, water is able to carry dissolved substances from one part of the body to another.Many of the substances that dissolve are ionic and when they dissolve they form ions in solution. We are going to look at how water is able to dissolve ionic compounds, how these ions maintain a balance in the human body, how they affect water hardness and how specific ions determine the pH of solutions.