The Water Cycle: Transpiration

We all  know the how the water cycle works, but were you aware that plants add to the water cycle when they "transpire" water into the atmosphere?  

Transpire?  Plants breath kind of like humans breath...except differently...When humans breath, they breath in air, and exhale air and carbon dioxide.  Mixed together, water molecules come out of our lungs and into the air.  

When camping this is noticeable when it is warm in your tent and cooler outside the tent.  Your breath condenses at the top of the tent.  Well, if you were a plant, you wouldn't "respire" or breath like humans, but you transpire.   When a plant makes sugar or goes through its cycle of photosynthesis, the "waste" is water!  Plants will squeeze out oxygen and water of its tiny "stomata's".  

When you get a whole bunch of plants transpiring, it can be invisible or visible...

Where it is warm, like the Amazon Rain Forests, in the afternoon clouds form over the forests due to transpiration....maybe we could call this evapotranspiration.  Plants, pushing moisture into the atmosphere. 

Scientists calculate that 15% of moisture in the atmosphere comes from plants!

That is not smoke coming out of the rain forest.  It is TRANSPIRATION. 

Transpiration: an important part of the Water Cycle.