The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity.
The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:
In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams, and the works of mound-building termites, are thought of as natural. (Full article...)
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity.
The concept of the natural environment can be distinguished as components:
In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are where humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion, the natural environment is greatly changed into a simplified human environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment becomes an artificial one. Though many animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves, they are not human, hence beaver dams, and the works of mound-building termites, are thought of as natural.
People cannot find absolutely natural environments on Earth, and naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. The massive environmental changes of humanity in the Anthropocene have fundamentally effected all natural environments: including from climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution from plastic and other chemicals in the air and water. More precisely, we can consider the different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their degree of naturalness is not uniform. If, for instance, in an agricultural field, the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil are similar to those of an undisturbed forest soil, but the structure is quite different. (Full article...)
ASEAN Heritage Parks (AHP) are selected protected areas in the ASEAN region that are known for their unique biodiversity and ecosystems, wilderness and outstanding values in scenic, cultural, educational, research, recreational and tourism. Its vision is "An ASEAN region whose biological is conserved, sustainably managed and used, and equitably shared for the well-being of its peoples." The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) in the Philippines serves as the secretariat of the ASEAN Heritage Parks Programme.
The ASEAN Heritage Parks were established as the ASEAN national heritage parks and nature reserves on 29 November 1984 when only 6 countries: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand were member countries. They became known by the present name on 18 December 2003 after Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam joined the organisation between 1995 and 1999. Through declarations, ASEAN member countries agreed that, "common cooperation is necessary to conserve and manage the parks for the development and implementation of regional conservation as well as regional mechanisms complementary to national efforts to implement conservation measures. (Full article...)
... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, accumulated 20,000 documents across 40 years that revealed corporate and government cover-ups?
... that Enriqueta Medellín, a Mexican surgeon, has an ecological center and environmental prize named after her in the state of Aguascalientes?
... that Enriqueta Legorreta, who was the first Mexican woman to appear as Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre, became an award-winning environmental activist?
... that environmental defenders on the front of the global environmental justice movement are being killed at a rate of about three per week?
... that critics objected to Dangers of the Mail in the 1930s for government support of lewdness and in the 2000s for creating a hostile work environment?
... that Salar de Pajonales in Chile has been used as an analogue for environments on Mars?
On a fundamental level, Harkin's philosophy had two dominant components: the economic, which saw park lands in commercial terms, and the humanitarian which saw parks as being integral to the well-being of the human spirit on a physical, mental and moral level. In successfully bringing these two principles together in a symbiotic way, Harkin was able to facilitate the incredible growth of Canadian tourism and, at the same time, justify his conservationist goals. (Full article...)
The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Few creatures make the ice shelves of Antarctica their habitat, but water beneath the ice can provide habitat for multiple species. Animals such as penguins have adapted to live in very cold conditions. (from Habitat)
Image 4Cattails indicate the presence of phosphorus in the water. Cattails are an invasive species; they crowd out sawgrass and grow too thick to allow nesting for birds and alligators. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 10The Paris Agreement (formerly the Kyoto Protocol) is adopted in 2016. Nearly every country in the United Nations has signed the treaty, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (from Environmental science)
Image 15Proportion of forest area by forest area density class and global ecological zone, 2015, from Food and Agriculture Organization publication The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief (from Ecoregion)
Image 16Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 17View of Earth, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew. Approximately 71% of Earth's surface (an area of some 361 million square kilometers) consists of ocean (from Ecoregion)
Image 19Biodiversity of a coral reef. Corals adapt and modify their environment by forming calcium carbonate skeletons. This provides growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species. (from Environmental science)
Image 20Compartments established by C&SF projects that separated the historic Everglades into Water Conservation Areas and the Everglades Agricultural Area. One-fourth of the original Everglades is preserved in Everglades National Park. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 21Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 23A map of the Amazon rainforest ecoregions. The yellow line encloses the ecoregions per the World Wide Fund for Nature. (from Ecoregion)
Image 24Loch Lomond in Scotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained stable over a long period until a number of introductions in the 1970s restructured its food web. (from Ecosystem)
Image 35A team of British researchers found a hole in the ozone layer forming over Antarctica, the discovery of which would later influence the Montreal Protocol in 1987. (from Environmental science)
Image 37Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking novel, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society. (from Environmental science)
Image 39Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 40Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
Image 45Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (from Ecosystem)
Image 54Climbing ferns overtake cypress trees in the Everglades. The ferns act as "fire ladders" that can destroy trees that would otherwise survive fires. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 55A false color composite of the greater Boston area, created using remote sensing technology, reveals otherwise not visible characteristics about the land cover and the health of the surrounding ecosystems. (from Environmental science)
...that many countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol actually increased the greenhouse gasemissions, contrary to the treaty? And for that, the 15 January 2011, a representative of the country had to stick their head in a hole of sand in Cancun, Mexico?
... that the idea of atmospheric gases trapping the Suns heat to produce the greenhouse effect was put forward by Joseph Fourier in the 1820’s?
... that the global ecological footprint is 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita?
... that each year in 22,500 cemeteries across the United States approximately 30 million board feet (70,000 m³) of hardwoods are buried as caskets?
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