Part 1-a:
I live in Tripoli which is the capital city of Libya. Our water supply chain starts from the Libyan desert which forms the northern and eastern part of the Sahara desert. The desert has aquifers of meteoric origin derived mainly from rain. This underground water is extracted and delivered to sets of huge reservoirs scattered across Libya through the Great Man-Made River (1). A network of pipes supplies water to the houses in Tripoli from a set of reservoirs located south of Tripoli. Moreover, each house in Tripoli usually has its own well where the delivered water will be stored. Then, water will just flow from this local well to the tap. The used water will flow from the drain and gets collected at local wells. Then it is transferred to wastewater treatment plants where it is recycled. The recycled water is then reused for agriculture irrigation and meeting industrial needs.
(1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River
Part 1-b:
Keeping track of my daily activities in which I use water really surprised me with the amount of water I use. Here’s a list of my activities with estimated amount used (according to USGS):
| Activity | Estimated Amount |
| Shower, 15 minutes | 75 gallons |
| Teeth brushing, 2 times | 2 gallons |
| Hand & Face washing, 8 times | 8 gallons |
| Toilet flushes, 8 times | 24 gallons |
| Dishwashing by hand, 1 time | 15 gallons |
| Drinking water | 1 gallon |
| Total → | 125 gallons |
Part 1-c:
In my attempt to reduce my daily water consumption I tried to decrease the amount of time spent on each activity or decrease its frequency. I prioritized drinking water, teeth brushing, and showering. I decreased the time I spend showering from 15 minutes to 8 minutes which reduced the showering consumption from 75 gallons to 40 gallons. Also, I used the toilet and washed my hands 4 times. I turned the faucet off when brushing my teeth and when dishwashing by hand. However, I drank the same amount of water. Overall this amounted to an estimate of 65.5 gallons. Even though I have reduced my activities in part 1-b to nearly half the duration or frequency, the experiment clearly failed by a large margin. This failure taught me that I shouldn’t take water for granted and that I need to be more efficient in my water consumption. Geography matters to water use because it can determine how much rain a region will get in addition to the difficulty of extracting underground water. For example, Latin America has high freshwater availability but has low water use rate (according to Figure 4.2, 4.3) which is partly due to the geographical challenges of extracting water.
Hi my name is Jiye Choi, major in energy engineering.
I enjoyed reading your post. it is very interesting to read about how they extract water from desert. it is very different from here that people store water in their own well. because people don’t even usually own wells here. I think it is very tough to live a day with two gallon of water. I saw that you tried to cut down water usage like decreasing frequency and time, however, it is still exceeding two gallon of water. I think it is good start to save water. http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/02/09/learning-activity-4-jiye-choi/ here is my post, if you want to check out how i tried to cut down water usage.