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External factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. On broad geographic scales, climate is the factor that "most strongly determines ecosystem processes and structure".
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
[171]: 62 The physical environment is external to the level of biological organization under investigation, including abiotic factors such as temperature, radiation, light, chemistry, climate and geology. The biotic environment includes genes, cells, organisms, members of the same species (conspecifics) and other species that share a habitat. [172]
Eugene Odum, one of the founders of the science of ecology, stated: "Any unit that includes all of the organisms (i.e.: the "community") in a given area interacting with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads to clearly defined trophic structure, biotic diversity, and material cycles (i.e.: exchange of materials between living ...
Environmental resource management is an issue of increasing concern, as reflected in its prevalence in several texts influencing global sociopolitical frameworks such as the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future, [3] which highlighted the integrated nature of the environment and international development, and the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World reports.
Grassed tram track in Belgrade, Serbia. Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to achieve sustainable outcomes.
In addition, an important proportion of a forest ecosystem's biomass is often underground, where soil structure, water quality and quantity, and levels of various soil nutrients can vary greatly. [10] Thus, forests are often highly heterogeneous environments compared to other terrestrial plant communities. This heterogeneity in turn can enable ...
Environmental design and planning is the moniker used by several Ph.D. programs that take a multidisciplinary approach to the built environment. Typically environmental design and planning programs address architectural history or design (interior or exterior), city or regional planning, landscape architecture history or design, environmental ...