Earth's surface diagram

[Dr Jekyll]

If this is accurate, the amount covered by fresh water seems surprisingly small.

[ARFBY]

If you imagine for a moment, all of the build up areas around the world, the huge "Concrete Jungles", the sprawling cities and such; All of the worlds fresh water covering the same area seems a pretty good amount.

[FWIW]

An interactive version of that would be interesting. Showing how the ratios have changed over a few thousand years.

[The Wookie]

If it’s accurate I think the agriculture segment is the scariest bit of that chart personally. Obviously they’ve put it next to forests for that exact reason but it really does drill home why deforestation happens

[Flooble]

ARFBY said:

If you imagine for a moment, all of the build up areas around the world, the huge "Concrete Jungles", the sprawling cities and such; All of the worlds fresh water covering the same area seems a pretty good amount.

It is fascinating how animal life requires fresh water not salt water - distinctly limiting in many respects. But then, obtaining salt water away from the coast would be even harder.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Flooble said:

It is fascinating how animal life requires fresh water not salt water - distinctly limiting in many respects.

Plenty of stuff in the sea doing perfectly ok with salt water.

[glazbagun]

Flooble said:

ARFBY said:

If you imagine for a moment, all of the build up areas around the world, the huge "Concrete Jungles", the sprawling cities and such; All of the worlds fresh water covering the same area seems a pretty good amount.

It is fascinating how animal life requires fresh water not salt water - distinctly limiting in many respects. But then, obtaining salt water away from the coast would be even harder.

The lightbulb thing for me a while back was the realisation that freshwater was a finite resource. Not finite like oil or gold, but with a fairly hard limit on how quickly it replenishes. In Scotland this limit seemed plenty high enough, but globally optimising its use is clearly a big deal.

[Soloman Dodd]

Yes, but Glaciers are freshwater too. Surprising ratio for those two.