Portal:Environment

WikiProject Environment

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Welcome to the Environment Portal
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Introduction

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:

Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, 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. (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:

Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, 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.

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...)

Selected article -

The dam in September 2009

The Three Gorges Dam (simplified Chinese: 三峡大坝; traditional Chinese: 三峽大壩; pinyin: Sānxiá Dàbà) is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River near Sandouping in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, central China, downstream of the Three Gorges. The world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW), the Three Gorges Dam generates 95±20 TWh of electricity per year on average, depending on the amount of precipitation in the river basin. After the extensive monsoon rainfalls of 2020, the dam's annual production reached nearly 112 TWh, breaking the previous world record of ~103 TWh set by Itaipu Dam in 2016.

The dam's body was completed in 2006; the power plant was completed and fully operational by 2012, when the last of the main water turbines in the underground plant began production. Each of the main water turbines has a capacity of 700 MW. Combining the capacity of the dam's 32 main turbines with the two smaller generators (50 MW each) that provide power to the plant itself, the total electric generating capacity of the Three Gorges Dam is 22,500 MW. The last major component of the project, the ship lift, was completed in 2015. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Did you know (auto-generated) -

... that Mycobacterium bacterial species constantly remodel their cell wall layers to survive in stressful environments and avoid their host's immune defenses?
... that LeRoy Woodson's photographs of steel-industry pollution were part of the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica project?
... that some severe environmental impacts of the invasion of Ukraine can be seen from space?
... that Nicola Griffith's Slow River, described as a lesbian romance, features a "sophisticated depiction of environmental management"?
... that the U.S. Public Health Service Environmental Health Divisions grew from a water-pollution research station in Cincinnati into the modern Environmental Protection Agency?
... that people with sensory processing disorders often require sensory friendly environments which are designed to accommodate their condition?
... that Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?
... 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?

Selected image -

Radioactive contamination is the uncontrolled distribution of radioactive material in a given environment. It is typically the result of a spill or accident during the production or use of radionuclides (radioisotopes). Contamination may occur from radioactive gases, liquids or particles. For example, if a radionuclide used in nuclear medicine is accidentally spilled, the material could be spread by people as they walk around. Radioactive contamination may also be an inevitable result of certain processes, such as the release of radioactive xenon in nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Current events

Selected biography -

Porritt receiving an honorary degree from the University of Exeter in 2008

Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE (born 6 July 1950) is a British environmentalist and writer. He is known for his advocacy of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Porritt frequently contributes to magazines, newspapers and books, and appears on radio and television. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

Selected organization -

IGBP

The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) was a research programme that ran from 1987 to 2015 dedicated to studying the phenomenon of global change. Its primary focus was coordinating "international research on global-scale and regional-scale interactions between Earth's biological, chemical and physical processes and their interactions with human systems."

The International Council of Scientific Unions, a coordinating body of national science organizations, launched IGBP. It looked at the total Earth system, the changes that are occurring, and the manner in which changes are influenced by human actions. (Full article...)

List of selected organizations

General images -

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

Image 1A protest against the Adani Carmichael mine, 2016 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 2Crown-of-thorns starfish and eaten coral off the coast of Cooktown, Queensland (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 3A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps (National Park). (from Ecoregion)
Image 4Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 5Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 6Planned water recovery and storage implementation using CERP strategies (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 7Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 8Tropical Cyclone Larry over the Great Barrier Reef, 19 March 2006 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 9Global 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 10Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 11View 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 12Catchments along the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 13Roseate spoonbills, along with other wading birds, have decreased by 90% since the 1930s and 1940s. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 14A 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 15
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 16Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 17Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 18The 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 19Cattails 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 20Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 21A 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 22The 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 23Few 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 24Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
Image 25An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 26Biodiversity 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 27Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking novel, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society. (from Environmental science)
Image 28The Amazon River in Brazil. (from Ecoregion)
Image 29Current water drainage patterns in South Florida in 2005 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 30The 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 31Loch 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 32Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
Image 33WWF terrestrial ecoregions (from Ecoregion)
Image 34Proportion 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 35Storage Silos on the Gladstone waterfront, an industrial area in the water catchment area (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 36Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right) (from Environmental science)
Image 37Trichodesmium bloom off the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 38Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
Image 39The Earth's atmosphere (from Environmental science)
Image 40The Shen Neng 1 aground on the Great Barrier Reef, 5 April 2010 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 41A map of the bioregions of Canada and the US. (from Ecoregion)
Image 42Acropora with brown band disease, Lizard Island (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 43Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 44This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 45A 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 46Structure 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 47Climbing 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 48Compartments 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 49Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 50Natural water drainage patterns prior to development in South Florida, circa 1900 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 51The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 52Sea temperature and bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 53A major coral bleaching event took place on this part of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 54Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
Image 55Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as the Glen Canyon Dam in the United States (from Environmental science)
Image 56A map of the Amazon rainforest ecoregions. The yellow line encloses the ecoregions per the World Wide Fund for Nature. (from Ecoregion)

Selected quote -

More did you know -

...that recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy cost of processing new aluminium?

...that the incandescent light bulb has an energy efficiency of only 5%, and the rest of the energy is used to generate heat rather than light?

... that since 1500 CE 784 extinctions have been documented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources?

... that rivers have been classified by many criteria, including their topography, their biotic status and their relevance to white water rafting and canoeing activities?

... 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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