Hi, prospective visitors. I am a new kid on “the blog”. I am
enthused to be on the blog. In starting this blog I hope to share my views with
you, thereby elicit your thoughts and learn from you. In the process, my
expectation is that I would be adding to the world’s stock of knowledge, increasing my own knowledge,
enlighten and make people happier and, on the whole, help make our age a better
and thrilling time to find oneself.
I have chosen THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT as my main theme. I
have chosen that theme because the natural environment is critically important in
supporting life. I start by attempting to define the term natural environment
and for that matter the parameters of the theme.
For most of human history, mankind was unable to separate
itself from nature (as Ralph Linton puts it, “The last creature in the world to
discover water would be the fish, precisely because it is always immersed in
it”). Nature was once a reality inseparable from daily life, it is given and
indestructible. Any destruction resulting from the actual utilization of
natural resources was local or temporary; any imbalance was restored by nature
itself. Nature completely determined the man-nature relationship and, through
the mechanism of self-regulation perfected over million years, the balance of
the natural world was successfully maintained. The foundation of an optimistic
view of nature was formed as nature consistently demonstrated its powers of
restoration and renewal (www.123helpme.com).
The Collins English Dictionary-Desktop Edition generally
defines the word environment as: the external condition or surrounding. In
ecology, which is the point of my theme, environment is defined as: the external
surroundings in which a plant or animal lives, which influence its development
and behavior. The verb form of the word environment, environ, first occurred in
the English language in the 14th century from Old French environner,
to surround, from EN- + viron, a circle, from virer, to turn.
The United Nations defines the environment as: the totality
of all external conditions affecting the life, development and survival of an
organism (stats.oecd.org).
The environment is associated with the following terms:
·
ECOLOGY
·
ECOSYSTEM
·
BIOSPHERE
ECOLOGY: the Collins English Dictionary-Desktop Edition gives
two senses of the term as 1) the study of the relationships between living
organisms and their environment 2) the set of relationships of a particular
organism with its environment(origin of the word-19th century, from German
Okologie, from Greek oikos house- hence environment).
The United Nations defines the term as: the totality or
pattern of relationships between organisms and their environment
(stats.oecd.org).
ECOSYSTEM: a system involving the interactions between a
community of living organisms in a particular area and its nonliving environment-
Collins English Dictionary.
Eugen Odum, one of the founders of the science of ecology
stated: “Any unit that include all 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 and nonliving parts within
the system is an ecosystem”.
The natural environment encompasses
all living and nonliving things occurring naturally on earth or some region
thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living
species. The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished by
components:
·
Complete
ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized
human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks,
atmosphere, and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries.
·
Universal
natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such
as air, water and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge and
magnetism, not originating from civilized human activity(env.wikipedia.org).
From the foregoing, it could be
noticed that certain terminologies occur commonly in the definitions and
concepts. The terminologies are organisms, plants, animals, living things,
external conditions and nonliving things. The terminologies could be classified
into two distinct groups: the living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) things.
The living things are animals, plants, etc. The nonliving things are basically,
water, soil and air or external conditions.
In defining the environment, two
views emerge as follows:
1) With the first view, the external
condition (nonliving thing-natural physical thing) in which the living thing
has been placed is the environment. The Collins Dictionary and the United
Nations definitions lend weight to this point. Let us use Ralph Linton’s fish
and water example as analogy. The fish is the organism or living thing and the
water is the environment. The water encloses the fish. The water surrounds the
fish.
2) With the second view, the environment
includes, comprehensively (encompass), all living and nonliving things, and
interactions thereof. Again, taking the fish and water analogy, the environment
includes both the fish and the water.
How is the environment measured and
weighed? Earth Science or Geoscience and Life Science use physics, chemistry,
biology, chronology and mathematics to build a qualitative and quantitative
understanding of the principal areas or spheres of the Earth. For example, considering
that it would be impossible to coax planet Earth onto a scale, it may be hard
to believe how easy it is to calculate the mass of the Earth. Thanks to Isaac
Newton, calculating the Earth's mass is simple. It's only a matter of
multiplying acceleration due to gravity by the radius of the Earth and dividing
by the gravitational constant.
Read more :
http://www.ehow.com/how_5044473_calculate-earth-mass.html.
The natural environment includes all
things occurring naturally on planet Earth- living and nonliving things. It is
quantified by Earth Science and Life Science.
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