Project Watershed Central New York

Water resources are sources of water that are useful to human beings for drinking, recreation, irrigation, livestock production, industry, etc. Even though 70% of the Earth's surface is covered with water, a majority of it is salt water. Only 3% of water on the Earth is fresh water, and 75% of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. The supply of fresh water is so limited in many parts of the world that the shortage constitutes a serious problem for the human inhabitants. It has been predicted that global scarcity of water resources will occur many decades before the much-heralded depletion of fossil fuel resources. Water scarcity is but one side of the problem; water quality is the other, in as much as a resource can also be lost through its degradation.