Hardscape
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Hardscape (as opposed to the landscape) refers to the paved over areas like streets & sidewalks, large business complexes & housing developments, and other industrial areas where the upper-soil-profile is no longer exposed to the actual surface of the Earth. It usually refers to heavily urbanized/suburbanized areas that are basically nothing but miles upon miles of concrete with hardly any soil exposed to the Earth's surface because it has long since been paved over.
Extremely large areas of hardscape can cause major problems with water runoff/drainage after severe thunderstorms, hurricanes, typhoons, etc.; therefore, artificial methods of drainage must be utilized in order to carry off the massive volumes of water that would normally be mostly absorbed into the ground as groundwater.
The water table in and around large areas of hardscape is usually very depleted because not enough rainwater is being absorbed into the soil of that area in order to help recharge the water table in that (usually urban) area. Such areas must then rely largely on "imported" freshwater from local or non-local lakes, reservoirs, dams, rivers, and streams. On the other hand, most homes in rural areas often use wells and springs as their primary source of freshwater because the local water table is being constantly recharged by the hydrologic cycle.
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