Science Order and Design Test 1 Practice

The water cycle moves water through the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere. Evaporation is the process that lifts liquid water from oceans, rivers, and lakes (the hydrosphere) into the atmosphere as water vapor, kicking off the cycle. Once in the air, water vapor can condense into clouds and eventually fall as precipitation, returning water to the surface where it can enter soils and rocks (lithosphere), be taken up by plants (biosphere), or flow back into bodies of water (hydrosphere). Infiltration does move water into the lithosphere, and condensation and precipitation connect the atmosphere with the surface, but evaporation is the key step that transitions water into the atmospheric phase, enabling movement through all the reservoirs of the cycle.