Thenatural environment ornatural world encompasses allbiotic andabiotic things occurringnaturally, meaning in this case notartificial. The term is most often applied toEarth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all livingspecies,climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity.The concept of thenatural environment can be distinguished as components:
Completeecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation,microorganisms,soil,rocks, plateaus, mountains, theatmosphere andnatural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature.
In contrast to the natural environment is thebuilt environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agriculturalland conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mudhut or aphotovoltaic system in thedesert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hencebeaver dams and the works ofmound-building termites are thought of as natural.
There are noabsolutely 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 theAnthropocene have fundamentally affected all natural environments including:climate change,biodiversity loss andpollution from plastic andother chemicals in theair andwater. 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 themineralogic composition and thestructure 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...)
TheExxon Valdez spill is the second largest in U.S. waters, after the 2010Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in terms of volume ofoil released. It is thecostliest disaster ever with no direct human fatalities. Prince William Sound's remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and made existing response plans especially hard to implement. The region is ahabitat forsalmon,sea otters,seals, andseabirds. The oil, extracted from thePrudhoe Bay Oil Field, eventually affected 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline, of which 200 miles (320 km) were heavily or moderately oiled. (Full article...)
... thatHitomi Tohyama, who was raised primarily in an English-speaking environment, did not learn Japanese until she began performing professionally in Japan?
Chernobyl reactor number four after the disaster, showing the extensive damage to the main reactor hall (image center) and turbine building (image lower left)
Mauricio González-Gordon y Díez, Marquis of Bonanza (18 October 1923 – 27 September 2013) was a Spanishsherry maker and a conservationist. Most of his life he worked for the family company,González Byass, where he increased its exports to a worldwide level. His family estate was located in the wetland region called Doñana in southern Spain and was threatened by drainage efforts in the early 1950s. González-Gordon with the help of researchers and international support managed to preserve the site, while at the same time donating some of his family land to the conservation effort. Afterward, González-Gordon became one of the founders of theSpanish Ornithological Society in 1954. His conservation efforts for Doñana culminated in the creation of theDoñana National Park in 1969. The area was designated aUNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. (Full article...)
The Rainforest Alliance certification seal on a cup of coffee
The Rainforest Alliance is an internationalnon-governmental organization (NGO) with staff in more than 20 countries and operations in more than 70 countries. It was founded in 1987 byDaniel Katz, an American environmental activist, who serves as the chair of the board of directors. The NGO states that its mission is "to create a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities." Its work includes the provision of anenvironmental certification for sustainability in agriculture. In parallel to its certification program, the Rainforest Alliance develops and implements long-term conservation and community development programs in a number of critically important tropical landscapes where commodity production threatens ecosystem health and the well-being of rural communities. (Full article...)
Image 4Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (fromRestoration of the Everglades)
Image 6The 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. (fromEnvironmental science)
Image 8Climbingferns overtakecypress trees in the Everglades. The ferns act as "fire ladders" that can destroy trees that would otherwise survive fires. (fromRestoration of the Everglades)
Image 17A 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. (fromEnvironmental science)
Image 20Compartments 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 inEverglades National Park. (fromRestoration of the Everglades)
Image 25Biodiversity of a coral reef. Corals adapt and modify their environment by formingcalcium carbonate skeletons. This provides growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species. (fromEnvironmental science)
Image 30Few creatures make theice shelves ofAntarctica 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. (fromHabitat)
Image 31Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (fromEcoregion)
Image 32A team of British researchers found a hole in the ozone layer forming over Antarctica, the discovery of which would later influence theMontreal Protocol in 1987. (fromEnvironmental science)
Image 38View of Earth, taken in 1972 by theApollo 17 crew. Approximately 71% ofEarth's surface (an area of some 361 million square kilometers) consists ofocean (fromEcoregion)
Image 40Loch Lomond inScotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained stable over a long period until a number ofintroductions in the 1970s restructured itsfood web. (fromEcosystem)
Image 41Wetland habitat types in Borneo (fromHabitat)
Image 45Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as theGlen Canyon Dam in the United States (fromEnvironmental science)
Image 46Proportion of forest area by forest area density class and global ecological zone, 2015, fromFood and Agriculture Organization publication The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief (fromEcoregion)
Image 47Cattails indicate the presence ofphosphorus in the water. Cattails are an invasive species; they crowd outsawgrass and grow too thick to allow nesting for birds and alligators. (fromRestoration of the Everglades)
Image 51Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate ofautotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (fromEcosystem)
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