The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity.
The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:
- Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, plateaus, mountains, the atmosphere and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature.
- Universal natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge and magnetism, not originating from civilized human actions.
In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams and the works of mound-building termites are thought of as natural. (Full article...)
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity.
The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:
- Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, plateaus, mountains, the atmosphere and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature.
- Universal natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge and magnetism, not originating from civilized human actions.
In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams and the works of mound-building termites are thought of as natural.
People cannot find absolutely natural environments on Earth, naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. The massive environmental changes of humanity in the Anthropocene have fundamentally effected all natural environments including: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution from plastic and other chemicals in the air and water. More precisely, we can consider the different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their degree of naturalness is not uniform. If, for instance, in an agricultural field, the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil are similar to those of an undisturbed forest soil, but the structure is quite different. (Full article...)
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Environmental monitoring is the processes and activities that are done to characterize and describe the state of the environment. It is used in the preparation of environmental impact assessments, and in many circumstances in which human activities may cause harmful effects on the natural environment.
Monitoring strategies and programmes are generally designed to establish the current status of an environment or to establish a baseline and trends in environmental parameters. The results of monitoring are usually reviewed, analyzed statistically, and published. A monitoring programme is designed around the intended use of the data before monitoring starts.
Environmental monitoring includes monitoring of air quality, soils and water quality. (Full article...)
Recycling is the reprocessing of materials into new products. Recycling prevents useful material resources being wasted, reduces the consumption of raw materials and reduces energy usage, and hence greenhouse gas emissions, compared to virgin production.
Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, CH, FRS, FBA, FAcSS (born 22 April 1946), is a British economist, banker, and academic. He is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE), and 2010 Professor of Collège de France. He was President of the British Academy from 2013 to 2017, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014. (Full article...)
Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia (2022) The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. As of 2021, it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.
Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members globally as of 2021 and has protected more than 119 million acres (48 million ha) of land in its history. As of 2014, it is the largest environmental non-profit organization by assets and revenue in the Americas. (Full article...)
The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Image 1Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
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Image 3View of Earth, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew. Approximately 71% of Earth's surface (an area of some 361 million square kilometers) consists of ocean (from Ecoregion)
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Image 4Cattails indicate the presence of phosphorus in the water. Cattails are an invasive species; they crowd out sawgrass and grow too thick to allow nesting for birds and alligators. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 6Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
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Image 7Biodiversity of a coral reef. Corals adapt and modify their environment by forming calcium carbonate skeletons. This provides growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species. (from Environmental science)
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Image 8A protest against the Adani Carmichael mine, 2016 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 9A false color composite of the greater Boston area, created using remote sensing technology, reveals otherwise not visible characteristics about the land cover and the health of the surrounding ecosystems. (from Environmental science)
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Image 10A portion of the C-38 canal, finished in 1971, now backfilled to restore the Kissimmee River floodplain to a more natural state (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 11The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
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Image 12Proportion of forest area by forest area density class and global ecological zone, 2015, from Food and Agriculture Organization publication The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief (from Ecoregion)
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Image 13Current water drainage patterns in South Florida in 2005 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 14The Shen Neng 1 aground on the Great Barrier Reef, 5 April 2010 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 16A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps ( National Park). (from Ecoregion)
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Image 17Structure 65B on the Kissimmee River is destroyed by the Corps of Engineers in 2000 to restore the natural flow of the river. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 18Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right) (from Environmental science)
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Image 19Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
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Image 20Few creatures make the ice shelves of Antarctica their habitat, but water beneath the ice can provide habitat for multiple species. Animals such as penguins have adapted to live in very cold conditions. (from Habitat)
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Image 22Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (from Ecosystem)
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Image 24Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
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Image 25Crown-of-thorns starfish and eaten coral off the coast of Cooktown, Queensland (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 26Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
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Image 27Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking novel, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society. (from Environmental science)
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Image 29The Ötztal Alps, a mountain range in the central Alps of Europe, are part of the Central Eastern Alps, and can both be termed as ecoregions. (from Ecoregion)
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Image 30WWF terrestrial ecoregions (from Ecoregion)
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Image 31An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
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Image 32Storage Silos on the Gladstone waterfront, an industrial area in the water catchment area (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 34Loch Lomond in Scotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained stable over a long period until a number of introductions in the 1970s restructured its food web. (from Ecosystem)
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Image 35A map of the Amazon rainforest ecoregions. The yellow line encloses the ecoregions per the World Wide Fund for Nature. (from Ecoregion)
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Image 36Natural water drainage patterns prior to development in South Florida, circa 1900 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 37Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 38Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
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Image 40A team of British researchers found a hole in the ozone layer forming over Antarctica, the discovery of which would later influence the Montreal Protocol in 1987. (from Environmental science)
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Image 41Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
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Image 42Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
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Image 43This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
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Image 44Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as the Glen Canyon Dam in the United States (from Environmental science)
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Image 45Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
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Image 46Climbing ferns overtake cypress trees in the Everglades. The ferns act as "fire ladders" that can destroy trees that would otherwise survive fires. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 47The Paris Agreement (formerly the Kyoto Protocol) is adopted in 2016. Nearly every country in the United Nations has signed the treaty, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (from Environmental science)
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Image 48Sea temperature and bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 49Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
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Image 51Catchments along the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 52Planned water recovery and storage implementation using CERP strategies (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 53The High Peaks Wilderness Area in the 6,000,000-acre (2,400,000 ha) Adirondack Park is an example of a diverse ecosystem. (from Ecosystem)
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Image 54Roseate spoonbills, along with other wading birds, have decreased by 90% since the 1930s and 1940s. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 55Compartments established by C&SF projects that separated the historic Everglades into Water Conservation Areas and the Everglades Agricultural Area. One-fourth of the original Everglades is preserved in Everglades National Park. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
- ... that the concept of reduce, re-use, and recycle as three equal options, but they are instead meant to be a hierarchy, in order of importance?
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