Portal:Environment

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Introduction

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic 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:

Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, plateaus, mountains, the atmosphere and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature.
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 actions.

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.

There are no absolutely natural environments on Earth. 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 affected all natural environments including: 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, we take an agricultural field, and consider the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil, we will find that whereas the first is quite similar to that of an undisturbed forest soil, the structure is quite different. (Full article...)

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Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity generation. Today, wind power is generated almost completely using wind turbines, generally grouped into wind farms and connected to the electrical grid.

In 2024, wind supplied about 2,500 TWh of electricity, which was over 8% of world electricity. With about 100 GW added during 2021, mostly in China and the United States, global installed wind power capacity exceeded 800 GW. 30 countries generated more than a tenth of their electricity from wind power in 2024 and wind generation has nearly tripled since 2015. To help meet the Paris Agreement goals to limit climate change, analysts say it should expand much faster – by over 1% of electricity generation per year. (Full article...)

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... that in 2023, footballer Funso Ojo was named as Port Vale's PFA community player of the year for his efforts at becoming more environmentally friendly?
... that Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?
... that the volcano Carachipampa is surrounded by a lake and a salt flat, and has a Mars-like environment?
... that clothing physiology is the study of how clothing interacts with the human body and the environment?
... that ancient permafrost can preserve viable microorganisms, some of which contain antibiotic-resistance genes that may be transferred to modern bacteria?
... that Enriqueta Medellín, a Mexican surgeon, has an ecological center and environmental prize named after her in the state of Aguascalientes?
... that a "sea of mega solar farms" concerns environmentalists in Kushiro, Hokkaido?
... that Salar de Pajonales in Chile has been used as an analogue for environments on Mars?

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Credit: Baycrest

Mai Po Marshes is a nature reserve in Hong Kong. It is managed by World Wide Fund for Nature. The marshes have an area of about 1800 acres and is listed as a Ramsar site under Ramsar Convention in 1995. It provides a conservation area for mammals, reptiles, insects, and over 350 kinds of birds (including Saunders's Gull and a quarter of world's Black-faced Spoonbill population). It also has inter-tidal mangroves along with 24 traditionally operated shrimp ponds (called Gei Wai locally) to provide food for the birds. It receives 40,000 visitors annually.

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Clare Palmer (born 1967) is a British philosopher, theologian and scholar of environmental and religious studies. She is known for her work on environmental and animal ethics. She was appointed as a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University in 2010. She had previously held academic appointments at the Universities of Greenwich, Stirling, and Lancaster in the United Kingdom, and Washington University in St. Louis in the United States, among others.

She has published three sole-authored books: Environmental Ethics (ABC-CLIO, 1997), Environmental Ethics and Process Thinking (Oxford University Press, 1998) and Animal Ethics in Context (Columbia University Press, 2010). She has also published two co-authored books and has edited (or co-edited) seven collections or anthologies. She is a former editor of the religious studies journal Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion, and a former president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. (Full article...)

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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics.

The WMO originated from the International Meteorological Organization (IMO), a nongovernmental organization founded in 1873 as a forum for exchanging weather data and research. Proposals to reform the status and structure of the IMO culminated in the World Meteorological Convention of 1947, which formally established the World Meteorological Organization. The Convention entered into force on 23 March 1950, and the following year the WMO began operations as an intergovernmental organization within the United Nations System. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking monograph, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society. (from Environmental science)
Image 2Cattails 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 3Loch 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 4Catchments along the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 5
A freshwater lake in Gran Canaria, an island of the Canary Islands. Clear boundaries make lakes convenient to study using an ecosystem approach.
(from Ecosystem)
Image 6Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 7Storage Silos on the Gladstone waterfront, an industrial area in the water catchment area (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 8The 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 9A 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 10Compartments 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 11Biodiversity 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 12Current water drainage patterns in South Florida in 2005 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 13Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
Image 14The Shen Neng 1 aground on the Great Barrier Reef, 5 April 2010 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 15View 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 16Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
Image 17Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 18A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps (National Park). (from Ecoregion)
Image 19Proportion 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 20Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
Image 21Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 22Sea temperature and bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 23Roseate spoonbills, along with other wading birds, have decreased by 90% since the 1930s and 1940s. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 24The Amazon River in Brazil. (from Ecoregion)
Image 25The Ötztal Alps, a mountain range in the central Alps of Europe, are part of the Central Eastern Alps, and can both be termed as ecoregions. (from Ecoregion)
Image 26A 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)
Image 27Structure 65B on the Kissimmee River is destroyed by the Corps of Engineers in 2000 to restore the natural flow of the river. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 28A major coral bleaching event took place on this part of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 29WWF terrestrial ecoregions (from Ecoregion)
Image 30Global 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 31The High Peaks Wilderness Area in the 6,000,000-acre (2,400,000 ha) Adirondack Park is an example of a diverse ecosystem. (from Ecosystem)
Image 32A portion of the C-38 canal, finished in 1971, now backfilled to restore the Kissimmee River floodplain to a more natural state (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 33Planned water recovery and storage implementation using CERP strategies (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 34Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 35This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 36A map of the Amazon rainforest ecoregions. The yellow line encloses the ecoregions per the World Wide Fund for Nature. (from Ecoregion)
Image 37An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 38Climbing 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 39Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 40Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 41The Earth's atmosphere (from Environmental science)
Image 42Few 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 43Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as the Glen Canyon Dam in the United States (from Environmental science)
Image 44The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 45Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 46Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
Image 47Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 48Natural water drainage patterns prior to development in South Florida, circa 1900 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 49Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 50A protest against the Adani Carmichael mine, 2016 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 51Acropora with brown band disease, Lizard Island (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 52Trichodesmium bloom off the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 53Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right) (from Environmental science)
Image 54Crown-of-thorns starfish and eaten coral off the coast of Cooktown, Queensland (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 55Tropical Cyclone Larry over the Great Barrier Reef, 19 March 2006 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)

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Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

— Jacques-Yves Cousteau

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...that tidal power is a form of hydropower that exploits the rise and fall in sea levels due to tides in order to generate electricity?

... that the first National Park was the Yellowstone National Park in the United States?

...that the United Nations Environment Programme (or UNEP), which coordinates United Nations environmental activities, was founded in 1972?

... that climate change scenarios, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) were superseded by Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)?

... that Liberian lawyer Alfred Brownell won the "Green Nobel" prize for his efforts to protect more than 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) of tropical forest land?

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