Environment
From Palaeos.org
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Contents |
Introduction
Environment can have several meanings. It can refer to the surroundings or ecosystem in which organisms live, hence the organism's environment. So for a marine organism the environment would be that part of the ocean in which it lives.
In a larger sense, the environment comprises all living and non-living things that occur naturally on Earth.
| ENVIRONMENT |
| Marine | Freshwater | Coastal | Terrestrial | Extreme |
The natural environment
Time range (Earth): Hadean-Recent
The natural environment, can thus refer to any environments that is not the result of human activity or intervention, including the Biosphere, Geosphere, Hydrosphere, Atmosphere, etc as a whole. Of course for some 4.5 billion years these were the only environments on Earth.
As far as living organisms go, there are at least four or five types of environment [1]:
- Marine environments
- Freshwater environments
- Terrestrial environments
- Coastal environments
- Other organisms (endoparastism)
To these can be added
- Extreme environment populated by organisms (such as eubacteria and Archaea called "extremophiles"; e.g. anoxic, exceptionally hot or cold environments, or deep within the Earth's crust.
The human-modified environment
Time range (Earth): Holocene-Recent
Within a very tiny slice of time (constituting the second half of the Holocene, from about 5000 years ago or so until now) there has occured the human-made environment (agricultural, urban) which has progressively modified all the natural environments. There is also the concept of the cultural environment (which is included under the noosphere).
Reference
[1] The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, ed. Adrian Friday & David S. Ingram, Cambridge University Press 1985.
Credits
MAK061107 (a bit of material from wikipedia)
