Sponsored by: By choosing to build from a pre-drawn plan â as opposed to hiring a residential architect to create a custom home â you've already taken a big step toward building a great home at the right price. But not all pre-drawn plans cost the same to build. You can still keep costs down and have a beautiful home by keeping several principles in mind. First, and most obviously, a larger home costs more to build and more to heat, cool, and maintain. That's why you'll find many smaller homes in this collection.
Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface; the oceans contain 96.5% of the Earth's water. The Antarctic ice sheet, which contains 61% of all fresh water on Earth, is visible at the bottom. Condensed atmospheric water can be seen as clouds, contributing to the Earth's albedo.
To break the numbers down, 96.5% of all the Earthâs water is contained within the oceans as salt water, while the remaining 3.5% is freshwater lakes and frozen water locked up in glaciers and the polar ice caps. Of that fresh water, almost all of it takes the form of ice: 69% of it, to be exact. If you could melt all that ice, and the Earthâs surface was perfectly smooth, the sea levels would rise to an altitude of 2.7 km. Illustration showing all of Earthâs water, liquid fresh water, and water in lakes and rivers. Credit: Howard Perlman, USGS/illustraion by Jack Cook, WHOI. Aside from the water that exists in ice form, there is also the staggering amount of water that exists beneath the Earthâs surface.