Hydrologic

3 Pages 741 Words

The hydrologic cycle is a rotation of water exchange between the land, the ocean, and the atmosphere on earth. It is an amazing fact that water circulates without any loss of water. ¡°Hydrologic cycle includes evaporation form the sea, movement of water vapor over the land, condensation, precipitation, surface runoff, subsurface runoff, and so on¡±. (p.189) Because it is a complex and long process, humans did not recognize what was exactly going on until recent times.
Talking about how humans developed the idea of the hydrologic cycle, we begin with the ideas of people from the sixteenth century.
They believed that water discharged by springs and streams could not be derived form the rain, for two reasons. The first reason was that rainfall was treated as inadequate in quantity. The other reason was that they believed the earth was too impervious to permit penetration of water very far below the surface. (p.190)

However, people from even earlier ages, the ancients, knew that the ocean never overflowed. So they figured that was why the rivers flowed to the oceans. One thing the ancients wondered about was how the water got into the rivers from the seas, and how it lost its salt content. The evidence suggests that the ancients¡¯ ideas came from the Bible. In Ecclesiastes 1:7, it says, ¡®all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again.¡¯
¡°Once again the recognition of the role of infiltration in supplying water to springs and rivers began in the sixteenth century¡±. (p.190) Leonardo da Vinci is credited with one of the earliest accurate descriptions of the hydrologic cycle. He was a brilliant scientist, and he was in charge of canals in the Milan area at the time. Probably his occupation of being in charge of canals helped him developing his theory about the hydrologic cycle.
Whence we may conclude that the water goes form...