In
hydrology
Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydro ...
, moisture recycling or precipitation recycling refer to the process by which a portion of the
precipitated water
Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...
that
evapotranspired from a given area contributes to the precipitation over the same area. Moisture recycling is thus a component of the
hydrologic cycle. The ratio of the locally derived precipitation () to total precipitation () is known as the recycling ratio, :
The recycling ratio is a diagnostic measure of the potential for interactions between
land surface hydrology and regional
climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...
.
Land use
Land use is an umbrella term to describe what happens on a parcel of land. It concerns the benefits derived from using the land, and also the land management actions that humans carry out there. The following categories are used for land use: fo ...
changes, such as
deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. Ab ...
or
agricultural
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...
intensification, have the potential to change the amount of precipitation that falls in a region. The recycling ratio for the entire world is one, and for a single point is zero. Estimates for the recycling ratio for the
Amazon basin
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributary, tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries ...
range from 24% to 56%, and for the
Mississippi basin
The Mississippi River is the primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, ...
from 21% to 24%.
Moisture recycling
The concept of moisture recycling has been integrated into the concept of the precipitationshed. A precipitationshed is the upwind ocean and land surface that contributes evaporation to a given, downwind location's precipitation. In much the same way that a watershed is defined by a topographically explicit area that provides surface runoff
Surface runoff (also known as overland flow or terrestrial runoff) is the unconfined flow of water over the ground surface, in contrast to ''channel runoff'' (or ''stream flow''). It occurs when excess rainwater, stormwater, meltwater, or other ...
, the precipitationshed is a statistically defined area within which evaporation, traveling via moisture recycling, provides precipitation for a specific point.
See also
*Water cycle
The water cycle (or hydrologic cycle or hydrological cycle) is a biogeochemical cycle that involves the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth across different reservoirs. The mass of water on Earth remains fai ...
* Precipitationshed
*Land surface effects on climate
Land surface effects on climate are wide-ranging and vary by region. Deforestation and exploitation of natural landscapes play a significant role. Some of these environmental changes are similar to those caused by the effects of global warming.
D ...
* Al Baydha Project
References
Climatology
Hydrology
Recycling
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