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Environment (systems), the surroundings of a physical system that may interact with the system by exchanging mass, energy, or other properties. Built environment , constructed surroundings that provide the settings for human activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places
The branch bridges the divide between human and physical geography and thus requires an understanding of the dynamics of geology, meteorology, hydrology, biogeography, and geomorphology, as well as the ways in which human societies conceptualize the environment.
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 ...
Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy. Biotic factors of the ecosystem are living things; such as plants, animals, and bacteria ...
In physical geography, a place includes all of the physical phenomena that occur in space, including the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. [13] Places do not exist in a vacuum and instead have complex spatial relationships with each other, and place is concerned how a location is situated in relation to all other locations.
ecosystem boundary – the spatial delimitation of an ecosystem usually based on discontinuities of organisms and the physical environment. ecosystem services - the role played by organisms, without charge, in creating a healthy environment for human beings, from production of oxygen to soil formation, maintenance of water quality and much more ...
Sauer was determined to stress the agency of culture as a force in shaping the visible features of the Earth's surface in delimited areas. Within his definition, the physical environment retains a central significance, as the medium with and through which human cultures act. [42] His classic definition of a 'cultural landscape' reads as follows:
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.