Large segments of the world's people have elected to live where water meets land, or very near to those places. Water has a multitude of attractions to people, such as transport, power, recreation, and industrial and domestic supply. Most importantly it is essential to life. Our water supply must be fresh (non-salt), safe (free of contaminants), and be available in an adequate supply. This lesson is based on the scientific article by Philip P. Micklin entitled Man and the Water Cycle: Challenges for the 21st Century in this issue of GeoJournal. These challenges include the provision of a safe and reliable water supply throughout the world. The global issue of "safe water," and access to that water is the main focus of this activity.
Objectives
The student completing this activity on "accessible safe water" will be able to: 1. describe the importance to humans of water for multiple uses; 2. use map and tabular data to demonstrate the relative locations of human population and water; 3. describe some of the health problems caused by unsafe water and how they may be solved; 4. apply choropleth mapping procedures in order to transform tabular data into spatial patterns on maps and show temporal changes with bar graphs. 5. analyze spatial patterns of "accessible safe water" spatially and temporally in order to evaluate change in a region.