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- Acre-foot - the volume of water required to cover 1 acre of land (43,560 square feet) to a depth of 1 foot. Equal to 325,851 gallons or 1,233 cubic meters.
- Alkaline - sometimes water or soils contain an amount of alkali substances sufficient to raise the pH value above 7.0 and can be harmful to the growth of crops.
- Alkalinity - the capacity of water for neutralizing an acid solution.
- Aqueduct - a pipe, conduit, or channel designed to transport water from a remote source, usually by gravity.
- Cubic feet per second (cfs) - a rate of the flow of water. It is equal to a volume of water one foot high and one foot wide flowing a distance of one foot in one second. One "cfs" is equal to 7.48 gallons of water flowing each second. As an example, if your car's gas tank is 2 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot (2 cubic feet), then gas flowing at a rate of 1 cubic foot/second would fill the tank in two seconds. An easy conversion is 450 gallons per minute equals 1 CFS.
- Irrigation - the controlled application of water to assist in the growing of crops and pastures or to maintain vegetative growth.
- pH - a measure of the relative acidity or alkalinity of water. Water with pH of 7 is neutral; lower pH levels indicate increasing acidity, while pH levels higher than 7 indicate increasingly basic solutions.
- Potable water - water of quality suitable for drinking.
- Reverse osmosis - (1) (Desalination) The process of removing salts from water using a membrane. With reverse osmosis, the product water passes through a fine membrane that the salts are unable to pass through, while the salt waste (brine) is removed and disposed. This process differs from electro dialysis, where the salts are extracted from the feed water by using a membrane with an electrical current to separate the ions. The positive ions go through one membrane, while the negative ions flow through a different membrane, leaving the end product of freshwater. (2) (Water Quality) An advanced method of water or wastewater treatment that relies on a semi-permeable membrane to separate waters from pollutants. An external force is used to reverse the normal osmotic process resulting in the solvent moving from a solution of higher concentration to one of lower concentration.
- Xeriscape - creative landscaping for water and energy efficiency and lower maintenance. The seven xeriscape principles are: good planning and design; practical lawn areas; efficient irrigation; soil improvement; use of mulches; low water demand plants; and good maintenance. A list of "low water" plants is available from the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
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70% of the earth's surface is covered with water. 97% is made up of salt water with other minerals, humans cannot drink this water. The salt could be removed, it is a difficult and expensive process. 2% of the water is glacier ice at the North and South Poles. This is fresh water and could be consumed if melted. Less than 1% of all the water on earth is fresh water that we can use.
Our state, Arizona is 114,000 square miles of this 492 square miles are made up of water, 0.4% of our state.
The state with the most percent of water is Rhode Island. The state is 1,212 square miles and 158 square miles of water, or 13%. New Mexico is the only state with less water than Arizona, 121,593 square miles and only 258 square miles of water or 0.2%. Arizona is 114,000 square miles and 492 square miles of water or 0.4%.
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