United States Geological Survey
Water Science School — Earth’s water distribution
The standard reference quantification of where Earth’s water is held: oceans, ice caps and glaciers, groundwater, soil moisture, lakes, atmosphere, rivers and biological water, in volume and percentage terms.
Rights
- Commercial reuse
- Yes
- Redistribution
- Yes
- Derivative use
- Yes
- Attribution required
- No
- Restrictions
- Applies to material authored by US federal agencies. Third-party material carried within a federal product may be separately protected.
- Terms last checked
- 23 August 2026
Access and coverage
- Publisher
- United States Geological Survey
- Geographic coverage
- Global
- Update frequency
- static
- Formats
- html, csv
- Bulk download
- Available
- Registration required
- No
- Cost to Hydrionis
- Free
- Domains
- resources
Notes
The underlying volumetric estimates trace to Shiklomanov’s work for UNESCO. Different compilations differ by a few percent, particularly for groundwater, so Hydrionis presents the figures with their uncertainty rather than as exact constants.
What Hydrionis uses it for
12 observations across 1 metrics currently reference this source.