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This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. [1] The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:
An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by organisms in interaction with their environment. [2]: 458 The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors.
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.
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, meteorology, mathematics and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geography, and atmospheric science) to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems.
The potential of the natural environment to sustain these anthropogenic changes while continuing to function as an ecosystem is an issue of major worldwide concern. Key environmental areas of interest include climate change, water supply and waste water, air pollution, waste management and hazardous waste, and land use issues such as ...
In this way, the environmental and ecological relations are studied through reference to conceptually manageable and isolated material parts. After the effective environmental components are understood through reference to their causes; however, they conceptually link back together as an integrated whole, or holocoenotic system as it was once ...
Environment most often refers to: Natural environment , referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or a group of organisms
Terrestrial ecosystems occupy 55,660,000 mi 2 (144,150,000 km 2), or 28.26% of Earth's surface. [5] Major plant taxa in terrestrial ecosystems are members of the division Magnoliophyta (flowering plants), of which there are about 275,000 species, and the division Pinophyta (conifers), of which there are about 500 species.