Name: _Gilbert Puga, Izabel Sinor, Cody Lawrence____

LAB 8: SURFACE WATER

The Hydrologic Cycle
You are going to follow a water molecule as it travels through the water cycle. Choose one card
from your starting station, the card will tell you where your molecule is going to next and how or
why it got there. Write down your results in the following chart. Note: if your card says “stay” go
ahead and write the location where you are staying instead of the word “stay”.

Water from Goes to Process

(Where you start) (Where you are going) (How you got there)

Ocean Ocean (Stay) Southern bound California current pushed me several miles but
remained in the ocean.

I reach near the coast of Mexico, close to the lapping waves at

Ocean Ocean (Stay) the beach, but remain in the ocean.

I run across a young athlete’s surfboard, and remain on his

Ocean Ocean (Stay) back until it evaporates and condenses in the surrounding
atmosphere.

I am carried through cloud cover across Baja, Mexico,

Ocean Lake precipitation drops me into Lake Huites and bounce across the
surface.

Lake Lake (Stay) A Jetski zooms across the surface of the lake and I get caught
in its wake and get tossed deeper into lake.
I get caught in a small overflow braided stream after a winter
Lake Groundwater storm, and get cut off in a small Oxbow lake and get absorbed
into the ground.

A cypress tree root absorbs me from the surrounding moist soil

Groundwater Plant in the Spring time

Absorbed into the moisture of the leaves of the tree, I fall and
Plant Groundwater get trampled by a mountain lion and am reabsorbed into the
ground.
Ocean bound river sweeps my from groundwater to stream,
Groundwater Ocean stream to river, river to ocean.

I get swallowed up by a Large Mouth Bass and get transported

Ocean Ocean (Stay) along their regular migratory patterns.

A fisher catches the Bass and shakes out the molecule off the
Ocean Ocean (Stay) side of the boat and back to the surface of the water
A hunchback whale breaches the surface for a breath of fresh
Ocean Ocean (Stay) air at the amusement of onlookers on a cruise, and I get
swallowed and dragged deep into the waters below.
The hunchback whale spews me out while opening its baleen

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 Ocean Ocean (Stay) mouth to catch various sea creatures for food. I get lost in the
deep currents of the ocean.
WATER CYCLE ACTIVITY
Summary Sheet
How many times
were you at each
station?
Soil 0
Plant 1
River 0
Lake 2
Cloud 0
Ocean 8
Animal 0
Groundwater 2
Glacier 0

1. Prepare a bar graph for the classes’ data.

Frequency

Soil Plants Rivers Lakes Clouds Oceans Animals Groundwater Glaciers

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 Water Cycle Stations

# Location
1 Ocean
2 Soil
3 Ocean
4 Plant
5 Ocean
6 Ocean
7 Ocean
8 River
9 Ocean
10 Lake
11 Ocean
12 Lake
13 Ocean
14 Groundwater
15 Ocean
16 Glacier
17 Ocean
18 Cloud
19 Ocean
20 Animal

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2. Where in the hydrologic cycle did you spend most of your time and what is a reason that
a water molecule would spend a lot of time there?

Most of the time the molecule was spent in the ocean. If we consider how much of the
planet’s water is contained within the ocean’s this is no surprise. All other sources are
simply transitional temporary stores compared to the oceans.

3. Did all of your classmates, who started at the same place you did, follow the same path?
Describe similarities and differences.

My lab partners certainly had some similar results in terms of proportion of location to
location.

4. This was a simulation – do you suppose that every water drop will follow the same path
in nature? Why or Why not?

There is a likelihood of a good portion of molecules that follow along the hydrologic cycle
given the immense amount of time they have had to fall into the pattern, but there is also
a possibility of skipping steps along the way, falling back into the previous one, and so
on.

5. Does water spend more time in some reservoirs than others? Which ones? Why?

Some water definitely stays in some reservoirs longer than others; the ocean is immense
and the water at the deeper levels might possibly never see another location in the rest
of the hydrologic cycle, some lakes remain for a good chunk of time, frozen glaciers can
remain for thousands of years before anomalous events cause them to melt.

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6. What makes the hydrologic cycle called a cycle?

It is cyclic in that there is a predictable formula for the movement of water in general in
the way evapo-transpiration occurs, and is accumulated in the atmosphere, condenses,
precipitates, and finds its way back to the sources that cause evapo-transpiration again.

7. How might the movement of water through the hydrologic cycle affect people? For full
credit – discuss 2 separate reservoirs.

Glacier melting via climate change is most definitely going to be affecting people, as the glaciers the
ocean waters rise, and coastal areas are potentially decimated over time, leading to untold levels of damage
to homes. Areas prone to flashflooding via higher amounts of precipitation as more intense climate change
related extreme weather takes place also poses a threat to people and homes.

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 Map of Campti, LA. Use
this to answer the
Questions on the
following pages

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Streams and Topographic Maps
Answer the questions below based on careful analysis of the topographic maps. Start by
carefully considering the landscape setting, topography, elevation, and any features that help
describe the local landscape.

Campti, Louisiana

8. What type of river is the red river? Meandering stream Braided stream
(circle one)

9. Where do these rivers typically form? Steep Mountains Gentle sloping plains
(circle one)

10. Water is flowing from the northwest to the southeast. Below is an overlay of the Red
River. Choose 2 colors to represent erosion and deposition. Using those colors indicate
4 places, on the map below, where erosion is occurring and 4 places where deposition
is occurring, along the river banks. Make sure you leave a key as to which color means
what.

Erosion

Deposition

Old River

11. What is the name of the depositional feature along this type of river?
The feature along the river is a bar.

12. What is the name of the bank that is being eroded?

The bank is called a cut bank.

13. Passoit Lake and “Old River” (just NW of map center) are the same type of feature.
What is the technical name for these semi-circular features?
These are what are known as oxbow lakes.

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14. How did Passoit Lake and “Old River” form?
Passoit Lake and Old River formed as the meandering river neck thinned as deposits
accumulate to point of cutting it off from the flow of the river, and it finds a shorter
straighter path to continue flowing.

15. Where is there an example of one that has already undergone much of that process?
In the very southeastern corner there is a small feature of water labeled at ’98, and looks
as if it were part of a meandering bend before it was cut off. I circled it in orange.

16. On the full sized map note the curved features on Smith Island (inside “Old River”).
These occur near other meander bends on the map. What are these and how are they
formed?
These are point bars, that are created by deposited alluvium, and are left over features
after the river bend has eroded further out.

17. Were the features on Smith Island formed before or after the Old River was cut off?
What evidence allows you to say this?

They were formed before because they have a proportional graded size relative to that
of the furthest cutbank formation. Each of them were once the outer cutbank.

18. Using what you have learned about this type of river visualize the future of this river. On
the overlay on the previous page sketch how you think the river might look in the
future.
Future visualization of the river is in yellow.

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23. How long did it take you to complete this lab?

Approx. 2 ½ hours.

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