the water table.
Under natural conditions, the water table rises in response to inflowing water and then declines as water drains into natural outlets such as wells and springs. This process is shown below.
The fact of the matter is that not all the sources of water are suitable for use by human beings, it is mostly the fresh ground water that is used in all the human activities. The distribution of fresh ground water is shown in the diagram below.
As seen above, the global fresh water is made up of a mere 2.5% of the world's total water supply. But the Fresh ground water only constitutes 29.9% of the global fresh water. It is also known that the period of renewal of the fresh ground water is about
1400 years, we can comfortably say that water as we know it is not a renewable resource but an exhaustible one.
Water is considered as the source of life; even the earliest civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia came about around sources of water. (i.e. Egypt - Nile River, Mesopotamia -Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) The main aim for such settlement was the availability of water for irrigation purposes. It is therefore important to conserve water to protect it from depletion. Let's deal with each aspect of the available water in terms of application and the possible methods currently in use and already proposed to conserve water.
a) Agricultural water conservation methods
The most water intensive agricultural activity is irrigation. This activity, on average, generally accounts for more than 70% of water usage on a farm. Water conservation would therefore be more effective if irrigation would be controlled so as to preserve water. The water conservation techniques can be divided into three major categories; field practices, management strategies and system modifications.
Field practices are basically what is actually being done in the fields, i.e. the irrigation methods etc. This method keeps water in the field, distributes wat...