Nothing comprises a larger portion of a plant's makeup than water. Understanding how it cycles through ecosystems is critical for growers to ensure that our plants have the water they need to thrive.

What Is The Hydrologic Cycle?

Water is not a static resource - it moves, flows, precipitates, and percolates through ecosystems in dynamic ways.

The hydrologic cycle studies the properties of water and the ways which it moves through ecosystems and how it's utilized by those systems.

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Notable Characteristics of Water

Water has a number of unique properties that make it such a critical component of life on Earth.

Water is an extremely effective solvent - a substance which is capable of dissolving various solutes into a homogenized mixture.

This is particularly important to understand, as water has a way of dissolving and then moving nutrients around - both through ecosystems as a whole, and also inside the cells and bodies of various life-forms.

We'll circle back to this point late in this article when we talk about some of the roles that water plays in our garden or farm ecosystems.

Water also expresses a high level of cohesion, causing droplets to attract and "stick" to one another.

It's adhesive as well, "sticking" to molecules of different types. For instance, water will trickle down plant roots as it infiltrates into soils - similar to how it adheres to and drips down stalactites or icicles.

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Water has a strong surface tension, tending to cling together in such a way as to minize surface area.

As a fluid, water is also governed by the laws of fluid dynamics, flowing with gravity along paths of least resistance and spreading out as it does.

These are just a few of the properties that make water uniquely-suited as complement to carbon for the basis of life.

Water Zone Layers

From top to bottom, the water zone layers present in any ecosystem are as follows:

  • ☁️ Atmosphere
  • 🌿 Topsoil (soil moisture)
  • 🔽 Unsaturated zone (mostly air-filled pores)
  • 💧 Water table (boundary)
  • 🪨 Saturated zone (groundwater)

Nutrient Leaching Into Groundwater

One important aspect to understand of how water moves is that various water-soluble nutrients can become dissolved in water and carried down through soil layers.

Over time, nutrients that leach down into groundwater can become inaccesible to plants.

Te learn more about how this process plays out, head on over to aur article on Groundwater Leaching.


That's all for now, thanks for reading!

If you have any questions, comments, or would like to connect with fellow gardeners, head on over to the forum and post there.