The hydrologic cycle (water cycle) recycles water on earth. The water cycle drives our weather and allows life to exist on earth. Let ’s start with the evaporation of water from the surface of the ocean.
As moist air is lifted, it cools and water vapor condenses to form clouds. In fact, clouds are made up of tiny water droplets and ice crystals that are so small they can float in the air.
This moisture in the atmosphere may be transported around the globe until it returns to the surface as precipitation.
Precipitation may take the form of rain, snow, sleet or hail. Once the water reaches the ground, one of two processes may occur, some of the water may evaporate back into the atmosphere or the water may penetrate the surface and become groundwater. The groundwater may take several different paths.
Groundwater either seeps its way to into the oceans, rivers, and streams, or into an aquifer which is a body of saturated rock through which water can easily move, or it may be released back into the atmosphere through transpiration.
Transpiration occurs when leaves from trees and other vegetation give off water vapor through pores in their leaves.
Some water on the earth’s surface is not absorbed by plants or become groundwater and becomes surface runoff, which empties into lakes, rivers and streams and is carried back to the oceans, where the cycle begins again.

Biogeochemical Cycles How the Earth Recycles
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