On this page, you will find NCERT Class 10 Geography Chapter 3 Notes Pdf free download. CBSE Class 10 Social Science Notes Geography Chapter 3 SST Water Resources will seemingly, help them to revise the important concepts in less time.
Resource and Development Class 10 Notes Social Science Geography Chapter 3
CBSE Class 10 Geography Chapter 3 Notes Understanding the Lesson
1. Water is a valuable resource. It is essential for life on the earth. Human body contains 70% of water. Plants cannot grow without water. Other living beings including micro-organisms cannot survive without water.
2. Three-fourth of the earth’s surface is covered with water and water is a renewable resource. Still there are many countries and regions around the globe that suffer from acute water crisis. The reason is that only a small proportion of it accounts for freshwater (2.5 per cent) that we can put to use.
3. The freshwater is mainly obtained from surface run off and groundwater that is continually being renewed and recharged through the hydrological cycle.
4. India receives nearly 4 per cent of the global precipitation and ranks 133 in the world in terms of water availability per person per annum. By 2025, it is predicted that large parts of India will live in absolute water scarcity.
5. Although the availability of water resources varies over space and time, water scarcity in most cases is caused by over-exploitation, excessive use and unequal access to water among different social groups.
6. Water scarcity may be an outcome of large and growing population and consequent greater demand for water. A large population means more water for domestic use as well as to produce more food grain. To facilitate higher food grain production, water resources are being over-exploited to expand irrigated areas and dry-season agriculture. This leads to falling groundwater levels.
7. The growing number of industries has made matter worse by exerting pressure on existing freshwater resources. Multiplying urban centres with large and dense populations and urban lifestyles have also aggravated the problem.
8. There are many regions in India where scarcity is due to bad quality of water. Water in these regions get polluted by domestic and industrial wastes, chemicals, pesticides, and fertilisers used in agriculture.
9. Now it has become essential to conserve and manage our water resources, to safeguard ourselves from health hazards, to ensure food security and so on. Over-exploitation and mismanagement of water resources will impoverish this resource and cause ecological crisis.
10. Previously dams were seen as a way to conserve and manage water. Dams were traditionally built to impound rivers and rainwater that could be used later to irrigate agricultural fields. Today, the purpose behind building dams has been multiplied. Dams are built not just for irrigation but for electricity generation, water supply for domestic and industrial uses, flood control, etc.
11. In recent years, people have opposed multi-purpose projects and large dams due to a variety of reasons. Regulating and damming of rivers affect their natural flow causing several problems for human beings as well as for aquatic life. Also, big dams have mostly been unsuccessful in controlling floods at the time of heavy rainfall.
12. Water harvesting system is considered both socio-economically and environmentally viable. In ancient India, along with sophisticated hydraulic structures, there existed an extraordinary tradition of water-harvesting system. Roof-top rainwater harvesting was commonly practised to store drinking water particularly in Rajasthan.
13. In the semi-arid and arid regions of Rajasthan, almost all the houses traditionally had underground tanks or tankas for storing drinking water.
14. Rainwater stored in tankas can be an extremely reliable source of drinking water when all other sources are dried up, particularly in the summers.
15. Rooftop rainwater harvesting is being successfully adapted in many parts of rural and urban India to store and conserve water. Tamil Nadu is the first state in India which has made rooftop rainwater harvesting structure compulsory to all the houses across the state.
Water Resources Class 10 CBSE Notes Important Terms
Glacier: A mass or river of ice moving very slowly.
Aquifer: A layer of water-bearing rock or soil.
Dam: A barrier across flowing water that obstructs, directs or retards the flow, often creating a reservoir, lake or impoundment.
Groundwater: Water obtained from a depth of more than 15 metres.
Multi-purpose project: A large-scale hydro project serving a number of purposes such as irrigation, flood control, etc.
Rainwater harvesting: A technique of gathering, accumulating and storing of rainwater for different uses.
Hydro-electricity: Electricity produced by using water power.
Drip irrigation: A type of irrigation in which water gets dropped in the form of drips close to roots of the plants in order to conserve the moisture.
Water Scarcity: A situation in which water is not sufficiently available to meet the needs of the people.