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.
There are no 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 affected 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, we take an agricultural field, and consider the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil, we will find that whereas the first is quite similar to that of an undisturbed forest soil, the structure is quite different. (Full article...)
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The environmental impact of agriculture is the effect that different farming practices have on the ecosystems around them, and how those effects can be traced back to those practices. The environmental impact of agriculture varies widely based on practices employed by farmers and by the scale of practice. Farming communities that try to reduce environmental impacts through modifying their practices will adopt sustainable agriculture practices. The negative impact of agriculture is an old issue that remains a concern even as experts design innovative means to reduce destruction and enhance eco-efficiency. Animal agriculture practices tend to be more environmentally destructive than agricultural practices focused on fruits, vegetables and other biomass. The emissions of ammonia from cattle waste continue to raise concerns over environmental pollution.
When evaluating environmental impact, experts use two types of indicators: "means-based", which is based on the farmer's production methods, and "effect-based", which is the impact that farming methods have on the farming system or on emissions to the environment. An example of a means-based indicator would be the quality of groundwater, which is affected by the amount of nitrogen applied to the soil. An indicator reflecting the loss of nitrate to groundwater would be effect-based. The means-based evaluation looks at farmers' practices of agriculture, and the effect-based evaluation considers the actual effects of the agricultural system. For example, the means-based analysis might look at pesticides and fertilization methods that farmers are using, and effect-based analysis would consider how much CO2 is being emitted or what the nitrogen content of the soil is. (Full article...)
Mai Po Marshes is a nature reserve in Hong Kong. It is managed by World Wide Fund for Nature. The marshes have an area of about 1800 acres and is listed as a Ramsar site under Ramsar Convention in 1995. It provides a conservation area for mammals, reptiles, insects, and over 350 kinds of birds (including Saunders's Gull and a quarter of world's Black-faced Spoonbill population). It also has inter-tidal mangroves along with 24 traditionally operated shrimp ponds (called Gei Wai locally) to provide food for the birds. It receives 40,000 visitors annually.
Sumaira Abdulali, born 22 May 1961 is an environmentalist from Mumbai, India, founder of the NGO Awaaz Foundation and convenor of the Movement against Intimidation, Threat and Revenge against Activists (MITRA). She was co-chairman of the Conservation Subcommittee and honorary secretary of Asia's oldest and largest environmental NGO, the Bombay Natural History Society, and was a Governing Council Member between 2008 and 2021.
Through legal interventions, advocacy and public campaigns, contribution to documentary films, television debates and press articles she has successfully mainstreamed and built consciousness about previously unknown environmental hazards, notably noise pollution and sand mining, and has won national and International awards for her work. She also set up the first network for protection of activists in India after an attack on her by the sand mafia is 2004. (Full article...)
The European Centre for Nature Conservation (ECNC) was a Dutch non-profit foundation which was active in the field of European nature and biodiversity policy between 1993 and 2017. It was set up as a network of university departments, expert centres and government agencies and operated as a European biodiversity expertise centre. The organization promoted sustainable management of natural resources and biodiversity, and aimed to stimulate interaction between science, society and policy.
Main areas of work were ecological networks, biodiversity assessment and monitoring, and stakeholder involvement. ECNC worked with and for the Council of Europe, UNEP and the European Environment Agency. (Full article...)
The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Image 1A 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 2A 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 3Natural water drainage patterns prior to development in South Florida, circa 1900 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 4Global 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 5Loch 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 7The 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 8Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
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Image 9The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
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Image 10A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps ( National Park). (from Ecoregion)
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Image 11An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
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Image 14Environmental 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 15Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
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Image 16Climbing 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 17Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
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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 20Aerial 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 21Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
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Image 22Crown-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 23 (from Ecosystem)
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Image 24Current water drainage patterns in South Florida in 2005 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 25A protest against the Adani Carmichael mine, 2016 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 26Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right) (from Environmental science)
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Image 27This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
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Image 28Rachel 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 29A 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 30Proportion 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 31WWF terrestrial ecoregions (from Ecoregion)
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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 33Sea temperature and bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 35Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
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Image 36Catchments along the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 38Roseate 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 39A 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 40Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
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Image 41View 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 42Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
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Image 43Compartments 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)
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Image 44Planned water recovery and storage implementation using CERP strategies (from Restoration of the Everglades)
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Image 45Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
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Image 46Cattails 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 47Biodiversity 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 48Acropora with brown band disease, Lizard Island (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
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Image 49The 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 50The 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 51Few 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 52Structure 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 54The 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 55Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
- ... 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?
- ... that Summer Rayne Oakes has been called "the world's first eco-model" because she only models clothes made from organic or recycled materials?
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