Fundamentals of Environmental Science

The fundamentals of environmental science are referred to the introduction to

environmental study. It primarily takes into account all the areas that are concerned with the
physical, chemical and the biological surroundings in which the organisms live. It draws
deeply upon the aspects of life and the earth sciences. On the other hand, there are some
overlaps that are unavoidable. The individuals, who are interested in studying and learning
about the environments will acquire understanding of the fundamentals of environmental
science in this research paper. Environmental science is a broad area, it provides concise,
non-technical explanations of physical processes and systems and the effects of human
activities. The main areas that have been taken into account in this research paper are, history
of environmental science, changing attitudes to the natural world, concepts of environmental
science, elements of the environment, types of environment, structure of environment,
environmental education, and need for public awareness.

INTRODUCTION
The word ‘Environment’ is derived from the French word ‘Environner’ which means to encircle,
around or surround. The biologist Jacob Van Uerkal (1864-1944) introduced the term
‘environment’ in Ecology. Ecology is the study of the interactions between an organism of some
kind and its environment. As given by Environment Protection Act 1986, Environment is the
sum total of land, water, air, interrelationships among themselves and also with the human
beings and other living organisms. Environmental Science is the interdisciplinary field and
requires the study of the interactions among the physical, chemical and biological components of
the Environment with a focus on environmental pollution and degradation. Environment studies
is a multidisciplinary subject where different aspects are dealt with in a holistic approach. The
science of Environment studies comprises various branches of studies like chemistry, physics,
life science, medical science, agriculture, public health, sanitary engineering, geography,
geology, atmospheric science, etc. It is the science of physical phenomena in the environment. It
studies the sources, reactions, transport, effect and fate of a biological species in the air, water
and soil and the effect of and from human activity upon these. Environmental Science deals with
the study of processes in soil, water, air and organisms which lead to pollution or environmental
damages and the scientific basis for the establishment of a standard which can be considered
acceptably clean, safe and healthy for human beings and natural ecosystems.

DEFINITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE:

Environmental science, interdisciplinary academic field that draws on ecology, geology,
meteorology, biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics to study environmental problems and
human impacts on the environment. Environmental science is a quantitative discipline with both
applied and theoretical aspects and has been influential in informing the policies of governments
around the world. Environmental science is considered separate from environmental studies,
which emphasizes the human relationship with the environment and the social and political
dimensions thereof. For example, whereas a researcher in environmental studies might focus on
the economic and political dimensions of international climate-change protocols, an
environmental scientist would seek to understand climate change by quantifying its effects with
models and evaluating means of mitigation.

SCOPE

Scope of environmental science is broad. Some of the aspects of scope of environmental

science are:

Ø
Studying the interrelationships among biotic and abiotic components for sustainable human
ecosystem,

Ø
Carrying out impact analysis and environmental auditing for the further catastrophic activities,

Ø
Developing and curbing the pollution from existing and new industries,

Ø
Stopping the use of biological and nuclear weapons for destruction of human race,

Ø
Managing the unpredictable disasters and so on.

There are some major issues like global warming, depletion of ozone layer, dwindling forests
and energy resources, loss of global biodiversity etc., that are going to affect the mankind as a
whole and for that we have to think globally.
ECOSYSTEM

The ecosystem is the structural and functional unit of ecology where the living organisms
interact with each other and the surrounding environment. In other words, an ecosystem is a
chain of interaction between organisms and their environment. The term “Ecosystem” was first
coined by A.G.Tansley, an English botanist, in 1935.

An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as
weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life. Ecosystems contain biotic or
living, parts, as well as abiotic factors, or nonliving parts. Biotic factors include plants, animals,
and other organisms. Abiotic factors include rocks, temperature, and humidity.

Every factor in an ecosystem depends on every other factor, either directly or indirectly. A
change in the temperature of an ecosystem will often affect what plants will grow there, for
instance. Animals that depend on plants for food and shelter will have to adapt to the changes,
move to another ecosystem, or perish.

Ecosystems can be very large or very small. Tide pools, the ponds left by the ocean as the tide
goes out, are complete, tiny ecosystems. Tide pools contain seaweed, a kind of algae, which uses
photosynthesis to create food. Herbivores such as abalone eat the seaweed. Carnivores such as
sea stars eat other animals in the tide pool, such as clams or mussels. Tide pools depend on the
changing level of ocean water. Some organisms, such as seaweed, thrive in an aquatic
environment, when the tide is in and the pool is full. Other organisms, such as hermit crabs,
cannot live underwater and depend on the shallow pools left by low tides. In this way, the biotic
parts of the ecosystem depend on abiotic factors.

The whole surface of Earth is a series of connected ecosystems. Ecosystems are often connected
in a larger biome. Biomes are large sections of land, sea, or atmosphere. Forests, ponds, reefs,
and tundra are all types of biomes, for example. They're organized very generally, based on the
types of plants and animals that live in them. Within each forest, each pond, each reef, or each
section of tundra, you'll find many different ecosystems.
There are two main components of an ecosystem which are in constant communication with each
other. They are the biotic components and the abiotic components.

Abiotic Components of Ecosystem

Abiotic components are the physical and/or the chemical factors that act on the living organisms
at any part of their life. These are also called as the ecological factors. The physical and chemical
factors are characteristic of the environment. Light, air, soil, and nutrients, etc. form the abiotic
components of an ecosystem.

The abiotic factors vary from ecosystem to ecosystem. In an aquatic ecosystem, the abiotic
factors may include water pH, sunlight, turbidity, water depth, salinity, available nutrients and
dissolved oxygen. Similarly, abiotic factors in terrestrial ecosystems can include soil, soil types,
temperature, rain, altitude, wind, nutrients, sunlight etc.
Climatic factors: Climatic factors contain precipitation, light, temperature, atmospheric wind,
and humidity. The wind can spread seeds in the air that helps with implantation and provides
plants an opportunity to grow. Also, the wind is an important illustration of abiotic components
such as wind speed and direction that can impact humidity.

Rain:

Rain is liquid precipitation: water falling from the sky. Raindrops fall to Earth when clouds
become saturated, or filled, with water droplets. Millions of water droplets bump into each other
as they gather in a cloud. When a small water droplet bumps into a bigger one, it condenses, or
combines, with the larger one. As this continues to happen, the droplet gets heavier and heavier.
When the water droplet becomes too heavy to continue floating around in the cloud, it falls to the
ground.

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation within the portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum that can be perceived by the human eye. The main source of light on Earth is the Sun.
Sunlight provides the energy that green plants use to create sugars mostly in the form of starches,
which release energy into the living things that digest them. This process of photosynthesis
provides virtually all the energy used by living things.

Wind

Wind is moving air and is caused by differences in air pressure within our atmosphere. Air under
high pressure moves toward areas of low pressure. The greater the difference in pressure, the
faster the air flows.

Temperature

Temperature is how hot or cold something is. Our bodies can feel the difference between
something which is hot and something which is cold. To measure temperature more accurately, a
thermometer can be used. Thermometers use a temperature scale to record how hot or cold
something is. The scale used in most of the world is in degrees Celsius, sometimes called
"centigrade". In the USA and some other countries and locations, degrees Fahrenheit are more
often used while scientists mostly use kelvins to measure temperature because it never goes
below zero.

Edaphic factors: This term arises through the Greek term 'edaphos' that means floor. Edaphic
factors contain substratum and soil. It indicates the abiotic components such as land geography
and soil features like mineral content. The land topography such as slopes, depressions, valleys,
mountains, and elevations each contribute to the features of the ecosystem. Similarly, soil
features such as density, structure, texture, and composition negotiate which plants could grow,
and what creatures could live there.

Soil

Soils are complex mixtures of minerals, water, air, organic matter, and countless organisms
that are the decaying remains of once-living things. It forms at the surface of land – it is the
“skin of the earth.” Soil is capable of supporting plant life and is vital to life on earth.
PH

The full form of PH is Potential of Hydrogen. pH is known as the negative logarithm of H+ ion
concentration. Hence the meaning of the name pH is explained as the strength of hydrogen. PH
describes the concentration of the hydrogen ions in a solution and it is the indicator of acidity or
basicity of the solution. The pH value on a pH-scale varies from 0 to 14.

A living organism can withstand only a limited range of pH changes, and any more pH
adjustments will make life difficult. For example: in the case of acid rain, the pH of the water is
less than 7. It increases the pH of river water as it flows into a river which hinders the survival of
marine life.

Minerals

Minerals are solid substances that are present in nature and can be made of one element or more
elements combined together (chemical compounds). Gold, Silver and carbon are elements that
form minerals on their own. They are called native elements. Instead, ordinary kitchen salt is a
chemical compound that is called rock salt, which is a mineral formed of sodium and chlorine
ions.

Topographic factors: Topographic factors contain altitude, surface exposure, and slope, etc. These
factors define how the activity of the human can affect the resources and land in the area. All humans
include affecting on several ecosystem features. Topographic components are likely to lead to large-scale
modifications. Thus, they could include profound impacts on various other biotic factors, abiotic factors,
the whole ecosystem, and whole biomes. Some of the examples include farming, dam building, mining,
and forest clear-cutting.

Biotic Components of Ecosystem

The living components of an ecosystem are called the biotic components. Some of these factors
include plants, animals, as well as fungi and bacteria. These biotic components can be further
classified, based on the energy requirement source. Producers, consumers, and decomposers are
the three broad categories of biotic components.

Producers are the plants in the ecosystem, which can generate their own energy requirement
through photosynthesis, in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll. All other living beings are
dependent on plants for their energy requirement of food as well as oxygen Producers,
otherwise known as autotrophs, convert energy (through the process of photosynthesis) into
food.

Consumers include herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. The herbivores are the living organisms that
feed on plants. Carnivores eat other living organisms. Omnivores are animals that can eat both plant and
animal tissue. Consumers, otherwise known as heterotrophs, depend upon producers (and occasionally
other consumers) for food.

Primary Consumers

Primary consumers are herbivores. Primary consumers feed exclusively on autotrophs. Any organism that
must eat in order to produce energy is both a heterotroph and a consumer. Examples of primary
consumers are zooplankton, butterflies, rabbits, giraffes, pandas and elephants.

Secondary Consumers

Secondary consumers nearly always consume both producers and primary consumers and are therefore
usually classed as omnivores. Examples of secondary consumers are earwigs, ants, badgers, snakes, rats,
crabs, hedgehogs, blue whales (their diet is primarily composed of phytoplankton-eating krill and
zooplankton, and phytoplankton), lions, and humans.

Tertiary Consumers

Tertiary consumers can be either omnivorous or carnivorous. They feed on primary and secondary
consumers, and may also eat producers (plants). Examples of tertiary consumers are hawks, snakes,
crocodiles and some big cats.

Quaternary Consumers

Quaternary consumers are not necessarily apex predators. Examples of quaternary examples are
the white shark, polar bear and alligator.

Decomposers are the fungi and bacteria, which are the saprophytes. They feed on the decaying organic
matter and convert this matter into nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The saprophytes play a vital role in
recycling the nutrients so that the producers i.e. plants can use them once again. Decomposers, otherwise
known as detritivores, break down chemicals from producers and consumers (usually antibiotic) into
simpler form which can be reused.
Types of Ecosystem
There are very many types of ecosystems out there, but the three major classes of ecosystems,
sometimes referred to as ‘biomes’, which are relatively contained, are the following:

 Freshwater Ecosystems
 Terrestrial Ecosystems
 Ocean Ecosystems

Freshwater Ecosystems

These can be broken up into smaller ecosystems. For instance, in the freshwater ecosystems, we
find:

 Pond Ecosystems – These are usually relatively small and contained. Most of the time, they
include various types of plants, amphibians and insects. Sometimes they include fish, but as these
cannot move around as easily as amphibians and insects, it is less likely, and most of the time,
fish are artificially introduced to these environments by humans.

 River Ecosystems – Because rivers always link to the sea, they are more likely to contain fish
alongside the usual plants, amphibians and insects.

These sorts of ecosystems can also include birds because birds often hunt in and around water for
small fish or insects. As is clear from the title, freshwater ecosystems are those that are contained
in freshwater environments. This includes, but is not limited to, ponds, rivers and other
waterways that are not the sea (which is, of course, saltwater and cannot support freshwater
creatures for very long).

Freshwater ecosystems are actually the smallest of the three major classes of ecosystems,
accounting for just 1.8% of the total of the Earth’s surface.

The ecosystems of freshwater systems include relatively small fish (bigger fish are usually found
in the sea), amphibians (such as frogs, toads and newts), insects of various sorts and, of course,
plants. The absolutely smallest living part of the food web of these sorts of ecosystems is
plankton, a small organism that is often eaten by fish and other small creatures.

Terrestrial Ecosystems

Terrestrial ecosystems are many because there are so many different sorts of places on Earth.
Some of the most common terrestrial ecosystems that are found are the following:

 Rainforests – Rainforests usually have extremely dense ecosystems because there are so many
different types of animals, all are living in a very small area.

 Tundra – As mentioned above, tundra usually have relatively simple ecosystems because of the
limited amount of life that can be supported in these harsh conditions.
  Deserts – Quite the opposite of tundra in many ways, but still harsh, more animals live in the
extreme heat than they live in the extreme cold of Antarctica, for instance.

 Savannas – These differ from deserts because of the amount of rain that they get each year.
Whereas deserts get only a tiny amount of precipitation every year. Savannas tend to be a bit
wetter, which is better for supporting more life.

 Forests – There are many different types of forests all over the world, including deciduous
forests and coniferous forests. These can support a lot of life and can have very complex
ecosystems.

 Grasslands – Grasslands support a wide variety of life and can have very complex and involved
ecosystems.

Ocean Ecosystems

Ocean ecosystems are relatively contained, although they, like freshwater ecosystems, also
include certain birds that hunt for fish and insects close to the ocean’s surface. There are
different sorts of ocean ecosystems:

 Shallow water – Some tiny fish and coral only live in the shallow waters close to land.

 Deep water – Big and even gigantic creatures can live deep in the waters of the oceans. Some of
the strangest creatures in the world live right at the bottom of the sea.

 Warm water – Warmer waters, such as those of the Pacific Ocean, contain some of the most
impressive and intricate ecosystems in the world.

 Cold water – Less diverse, cold waters still support relatively complex ecosystems. Plankton
usually forms the base of the food chain, followed by small fish that are either eaten by bigger
fish or by other creatures such as seals or penguins.

Ocean ecosystems are amongst some of the most interesting in the world, especially in warm
waters such as those of the Pacific Ocean. This is not least because around 75% of the Earth is
covered by the sea, which means that there is lots of space for all sorts of different creatures to
live and thrive.

There are actually three different types of oceanic ecosystems: shallow waters, deep waters and
the deep ocean surface. In two of these, the very base of the food chain is plankton, just as it is in
freshwater ecosystems. These plankton and other plants that grow in the ocean close to the
surface are responsible for 40% of all photosynthesis that occurs on Earth.

There are herbivorous creatures that eat the plankton, such as shrimp, that are then usually eaten
by bigger creatures, particularly fish.

Interestingly, in the deep ocean, plankton cannot exist because photosynthesis cannot occur since
light cannot penetrate that far into the ocean’s depths.