The Maya believed natural wells, such as the Xkeken cenote in Mexico's Yucatan, led to the underworld. (John Stanmeyer, VII, © National Geographic)
India's holiest river, the Ganges, is scribbled with light from floating oil lamps during the Ganga Dussehra festival in Haridwar. Hindus near death often bathe in the river; some are later cremated beside it and have their ashes scattered on its waters. (John Stanmeyer, VII, © National Geographic)
Jared Otieno, a worker with the Kenyan Ministry of environment and mineral resources, sprinkles water cupped in his hand as he and other workers who helped clean two-and-a-half miles of the Nairobi river basin in Nairobi greet foreign United Nations visitors to the river basin site on March 21, 2010. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)
A photograph of sunlight reflected by waterways across the central United States, as seen from the International Space Station in November of 2003. The scene looks southwest from above Lake Michigan across the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, towards Texas near the horizon. At least two of the smaller lakes at bottom, near the Illinois River, are cooling ponds for nuclear power stations. (NASA/JSC)
Floating on dreams and whispers, girls from a West Bank village cool off in the salt-laden waters of the Dead Sea. With its main tributary, the Jordan, at less than a tenth of its former volume, the inland sea has dropped some 70 feet since 1978. (Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum © National Geographic)
In Iceland the bountiful Kolgrima River inscribes the earth on its seaward path. (Hans Strand, © National Geographic)
Dry conditions produce cracked earth at a reservoir in Shilin county, Yunnan province, China, on Thursday, March 4, 2010. Yunnan is experiencing its worst drought in more than 60 years. (Ariana Lindquist/Bloomberg)
Southern California draws much of its water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which was diked and divided into farms more than a century ago. Many of the aging levees are at risk of failure. (© Edward Burtynsky, National Geographic)
A Chinese softball player hits a ball during a sandstorm in Beijing on March 20, 2010. Beijingers woke up to find the Chinese capital blanketed in yellow dust, as a sandstorm caused by a severe drought in the north and in Mongolia swept into the city. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Severed from the edge of Antarctica, this iceberg might float for years as it melts and releases its store of fresh water into the sea. The water molecules will eventually evaporate, condense, and recycle back to Earth as precipitation. (Camille Seaman, © National Geographic)
March 22nd, is recognized by the United Nations Water Group as "World Water Day", this year's theme being "Clean Water for a Healthy World". Although we live on a water-covered planet, only 1% of the world's water is available for human use, the rest locked away in oceans, ice, and the atmosphere. The National Geographic Society feels so strongly about the issues around fresh water that they distributed an interactive version of their April, 2010 magazine for download and will be exhibiting images from the series at the Annenberg Space for photography. National Geographic was also kind enough to share some of their images, in a collection with other photos from news agencies and NASA - all of water, here at home - Earth.
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