Fundamental of
Environment
WHAT IS ENVIRONMENT
• The sum of all external conditions
affecting the life, development and
survival of organism is called
environment.
• Surroundings in which an organization
operates, including air, water, land,
natural resources, flora, fauna, (Flora
are all the plants and fauna are all the
animals, of a given locale), humans,
and their interrelations is also called
environment.
• Land is a Finite Source. Land occupies roughly 29% of Earth's surface.
Of that land, 38% is used for agriculture.
• Land used for natural resources is 8-10 %. The net worth is 88 billion
tons.
• dry air contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04%
carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other trace gases.
Is this environment?
Ecology
• Ecology is the study of organisms
and how they interact with the
environment around them.
• Ecology is a branch
of Environmental biology, and is
the study of abundance, biomass
, and distribution of organisms in
the context of the environment.
Environmental branches
• Ecological health, bioscience, sustainability, oceanography and marine
biology are all different types of environmental science.
• The environment can be classified into four major
types: terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric, and human-made
environments.
• 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
Importance of Environment Science
History of Environmental Science
• Though the study of the environment is as old as any human endeavour, the
modern field of environmental science developed from the growing public
awareness and concern about environmental problems in the 1960s and ’70s.
• The publication of books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul
R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968),
• The next is 1979 Three Mile Island accident or the impact of
atmospheric sulfur dioxide and other emissions on acid rain. Environmental
scientists analyze a wide variety of environmental problems and potential
solutions, including alternative energy systems, pollution control, and natural
resource management, and may be employed by government, industry,
universities, or nonprofit organizations.
• Water that sinks to the bottom of the deep oceans eventually returns
to the surface, but this takes very much longer than the removal of
water molecules from the air.
• In the Pacific Ocean, for example, it takes 1000 to 1600 years for deep
water to return to the surface and in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans it
takes around 500 to 800 years (MARSHALL, 1979).
• This is relevant to concerns about the consequences of disposing
industrial and low-level radioactive waste by sealing it in containers
and dumping them in the deep oceans.
Limnology
• Limnology is the study of inland
waters - lakes (both freshwater
and saline), reservoirs, rivers,
streams, wetlands, and
groundwater - as ecological
systems interacting with their
drainage basins and the
atmosphere.
Saline water
in oceans, seas and
saline groundwater make up
about 97% of all the water
on Earth. Only 2.5–2.75% is
fresh water, including 1.75–
2% frozen
in glaciers, ice and snow,
0.5–0.75% as fresh
groundwater.
