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Where is most of Earth’s freshwater stored?
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water
Water is the most plentiful compound on Earth and is essential to life. Although water molecules are simple in structure (H2O), the physical and chemical properties of water are extraordinarily complicated.
Most of Earth’s freshwater is stored in glacier ice, which accounts for approximately three-fourths of all the world's fresh water.1
While groundwater is a significant reservoir—representing about 98 percent of liquid freshwater—much of it is located at great depths, making it difficult and expensive to access. Other, much smaller quantities of freshwater are found in lakes, rivers, soil moisture, and the atmosphere.23