Natural Environment | Wiki | Definition | Types | Components | Essay | Speech

Natural Environment | Wiki | Definition | Types | Components | Essay | Speech

Environment is everything that is around us. It can be living or nonliving things. It includes physical, chemical and other natural forces. Living things live in their environment. They constantly interact with it and adapt themselves to conditions in their environment.

In this blog, I am going to write about our environment, it's components and how we interact with it.

The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally.
In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. In such areas where man has converted the natural environment in to an urban settlement by doing construction and or transforming it to an agricultural field, the natural environment is greatly modified into a simplified human environment.


Now let us understand the components of our environment...

Composition - Layers of Earth

Earth science generally recognizes 4 spheres, the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere as correspondent to rocks, water, air, and life respectively.

Our Earth is comprised of six different layers:

1. Inner core
2. Outer core
3. Lower mantle
4. Upper mantle
5. Lithosphere
6. Crust

The Earth's crust, or lithosphere, is the outermost solid surface of the planet and is chemically and mechanically different from underlying mantle. It has been generated greatly by igneous processes in which magma cools and solidifies to form solid rock.

Beneath the lithosphere lies the mantle which is heated by the decay of radioactive elements. This convection process causes the lithospheric plates to move, albeit slowly. The resulting process is known as plate tectonics

Water on Earth:

Oceans - An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface (an area of some 362 million square kilometers) is covered by ocean.



Rivers - A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, a sea or another river.



Lake - A lake (from Latin lacus) is a terrain feature, a body of water that is localized to the bottom of basin. A body of water is considered a lake when it is inland, is not part of an ocean, and is larger and deeper than a pond.



Pond - A pond is a body of standing water, either natural or man-made, that is usually smaller than a lake. A wide variety of man-made bodies of water are classified as ponds, including water gardens designed for aesthetic ornamentation and fish ponds designed for commercial fish breeding.

Atmosphere, Climate and Weather:

The atmosphere of the Earth serves as a key factor in sustaining the planetary ecosystem. The thin layer of gases that surrounds the Earth is held in place by the planet's gravity. Dry air consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon and other inert gases.

Atmospheric layers:

 

      Exosphere - The outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere extends from the exobase 

                            upward, mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. 

Thermosphere - The top of the thermosphere is the bottom of the exosphere, called the

                             exobase It's height varies with solar activity and ranges from about 350-

                             800 km. 

    Mesosphere - The mesosphere extends from the stratopause to 80–85 km. It is the 

                             layer where most meteors burn up upon entering the atmosphere. 

   Stratosphere - The stratosphere extends from the tropopause to about 51 km. 

   Troposphere - The troposphere begins at the surface and extends to between 7 km at 

                            the poles and 17 km at the equator, with some variation due to weather. 

   Ozone Layer - The ozone layer of the Earth's atmosphere plays an important role in

                            depleting the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that reaches the surface.

                            As DNA is readily damaged by UV light, this serves to protect life at the

                            surface. The atmosphere also retains heat during the night, thereby

                            reducing the daily temperature extremes. 

Climate :  

Climate encompasses the statistics temperature, humidity,
atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these same elements over periods up to two weeks.

Weather :

Weather is a set of all the phenomena occurring in a given atmospheric area at a given time. Most weather phenomena
occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere.





That's all for now.

We are now familiar with the term environment...I will discuss about the ecosystem in my next post..Stay tuned...