Excerpt
Water is the basis of life, being typically 65-70 percent of human body weight and 80-95 percent of the fresh weight of non-woody plants. It is (apart from mercury) the only inorganic liquid found on earth (Figure 3). Thanks to earth's special mix of temperature and air pressure, it is also the only substance found in all three phases in the biosphere. Its importance extends beyond the bio-world into the physical world: it weathers rocks into soils (the substrate of land life), and then transports nutrients into plants and hence animals. As a CO2 solvent, it captures carbon into nature's basic foodstocks, i.e., land plants and ocean or lake algae.
So water makes up two-thirds of your body weight and has delivered the remainder, via breakdown of minerals, transport of the released nutrients, and carbon capture from the atmosphere! And a typical adult daily diet requires about 1 kg of food dry matter, but 2.5 kg of water.
Did you know?
• Even under ideal conditions, one could live for over a month without food, but only 10 days without water.
• Water consumption in the United States is …
Footnotes
Graeme Buchan is in the Department of Soil Science at Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.
- Copyright 1996 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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