An Introduction to Groundwater 2. Watertable Testwells Watertable Testwells Installation Data Sheet 3. Community Action - getting started 4. The amount of water on our environment is always the same. Water can exist as clouds, hail, steam, snow, rain, river water, sea water or as part of living things.
Water moves unceasingly from the earth's surface into the atmosphere and back again.
This movement is known as the water cycle or hydrologic cycle. The heat of the sun evaporates water, or changes it into invisible vapour. The same warmth, heating the earth's surface and its surrounds, creates rising currents of air that carry the water vapour upwards. High in the atmosphere the water vapour becomes cold and condenses into tiny droplets which cluster together and form clouds. If it falls on land some of it runs into lakes and rivers and some of it is absorbed into the earth and flows underground through porous rock and soil.