Environment means anything that surround us. It can be living (biotic) or non-living (abiotic) things. It includes physical, chemical and other natural forces. Living things live in their environment. They constantly interact with it and adapt themselves to conditions in their environment. In the environment there are different interactions between animals, plants, soil, water, and other living and non-living things.

Since everything is part of the environment of something else, the word environment is used to talk about many things. People in different fields of knowledge use the word environment differently. Electromagnetic environment is radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields. The environment of galaxy refers to conditions of interstellar medium.

In psychology and medicine, a person’s environment is the people, physical things and places that the person lives with. The environment affects the growth and development of the person. It affects the person’s behaviour, body, mind and heart.

The living conditions of living organisms in an environment are affected by the weather or climate changes in the environment.

The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The harm is most often applied to the 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.^[1] 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, 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.

Land management has preserved the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia while allowing ample access for visitors.

An image of the Sahara desert from satellite. It is the world’s largest hot desert and third-largest desert after the polar deserts.

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. In such areas 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 seldom 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. More precisely, we can consider the different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their degree of naturalness is not uniform.^[2] 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.

Natural environment is often used as a synonym for habitat, for instance, when we say that the natural environment of giraffes is the savanna.

Earth is objectively speaking, the best planet, what is the importance of environment? We’ve got oceans filled with things that look like this, and this, and also this, towering forests full of things that literally eat light and air, clouds, rainbows, clouds that look like rainbows, adorable sloths, funky looking caterpillars, and a universe of invisible tiny things that can do everything from make food to power the cycle of nitrogen on this here hunk of rock.

This beautiful, weird, corner of the universe has everything a person could need – and that’s because of the environment.

What is the importance of environment?

Well, it’s everything. And we humans depend on it for our literal existence. So don’t you think you should learn a little more about it? In this series of lessons on environmental science Miriam and I are going to explore all the ways humans interact with and rely on the environment.

Welcome to the Essentials of Environmental Science!

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary scientific approach to studying the Earth’s natural systems, human impacts on those systems, and potential solutions to environmental problems. People who work in the field of environmental science draw on aspects of biology, chemistry, economics, politics, human geography, urban planning, the list goes on, in their study of the natural world importance of environment in human life.

The scope of environmental science has steadily broadened over the last 100 years: starting from anthopocentrism – a human-centered worldview which has its roots in the European societies from which most modern scientific practices descend. Then into biocentrism – which ascribes value to human and non-human life, and finally into ecocentrism – which values the well-being of entire ecosystems including all the living and nonliving elements.

These three terms: anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism, describe standards of environmental ethics.

Depending on a culture’s – or a scientist’s – worldview, the environmental ethic will influence what questions are asked and what value we put on the answers. Today’s environmental problems, from water pollution to endangered species to climate change, require us to look for answers through the broadest lens: the ecocentric ethic. Humans have had a huge impact on our natural world, especially since the Industrial Revolution.

One 2011 article put it this way: “for better or for worse, the earth system now functions in ways unpredictable without understanding how human systems function and how they interact with and control earth system processes.” To truly understand environmental systems and human impact, it is important to not simply study an organism, like an endangered species, or a pollution source, like an oil spill, in isolation.

Instead, we should try to understand natural or human-caused disruptions to the environment from an ecocentric approach–looking at the bigger systems at play. If you learn one thing from watching our series on environmental science, make it this: We humans benefit from the environment, but we are also part of it.

That means our actions can and do affect Earth systems, so a lot of environmental science focuses on how to protect, preserve, and restore the systems human activity degrades. One way scientists do this is by constructing models to represent natural systems and all of their interconnected factors. Models are powerful scientific tools with the ability to both explain and what is the importance of environment.

A model could be code on a computer that recreates the physical processes of the earth’s climate, but it can also be a chart or graphic that represents the carbon cycle. Here’s a model of the planet’s hydrologic cycle. Environmental science helps us to understand how all the living and nonliving components are interrelated. Rain falls, runs into surface waters or down into the groundwater. Or, the water can be taken up by plants for photosynthesis.

This model represents all these actions with squiggly lines and rain drops. However, like any scientific model, it’s not perfect. It cannot possibly represent everything going on at any one time. The only thing that can do that is the earth itself. But even though we can’t run global-scale experiments, a model does allow us to predict what would happen if something in the system changed. For example, importance of environment in human life, this model would predict that there will be less evapotranspiration from the trees into the atmosphere.

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There are three major components of environment.
These are as follows:
Physical component.
Biological component.
Social component.
Physical component of environment:
Physical component of environment includes air, water, soil, light, temperature, climate, etc.
The physical components are also termed as abiotic components of the environment.
These environmental components accounts for determination of living conditions for the human population.
Physical component of the environment is again classified into three parts as follows:
Atmosphere (gas)
Hydrosphere (liquid)
Lithosphere (solid)
Structure of atmosphere:
The atmosphere is broadly classified into four major zones.
These zones are named as Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere and Thermosphere.
These three parts portrays the three important states of matter forming the environment.
This physical component of environment includes abiotic components like air, water and soil.
All these abiotic components affect much more to all living organisms along with human.
Water and temperature are the most significant abiotic components affecting living beings as water is important for survival of livings.
Water plays a vital role to keep optimum temperature of the body and perform metabolic activities.
All living things perform in a particular range of temperature.
Growth of living beings will be affected when temperature will not fall in that range.
Air is one of the major physical components, which is needed for respiration.
All living beings along with plants and animals need oxygen for their survival.
In metabolic process, oxygen is inhaled into the body and exhaled in form of CO2.
On contrast to it, the plants consume CO2 for food preparation during photosynthesis and releases oxygen to the environment.
Soil is another important component for all living beings to build their habitat.
It is the soil where plant grows and human builds houses to live in.
Soil serves to retain ground water which is obtainable for drinking and other farming activities.
Biological component of environment:
The biological component of environment is also termed as biotic component.
This biological component includes all living things like plants, animals and small micro-organisms like bacteria, algae and fungi.
Biological component interelates with the abiotic component of the environment. Interaction of these two components forms various ecosystems like forest ecosystem, pond ecosystem, marine ecosystem, desert ecosystem, etc.
Biosphere is independent and large ecosystem.
All ecosystems has three different types of living organisms; i.e. producers, consumers and decomposers.
Producer includes mainly green plants and other photosynthetic bacteria which synthesizes various organic substances such as carbohydrates, proteins, etc., with the aid of water, soil and light energy.
Consumers rely on green plants for their nutrition as these green plants produces organic food materials.
Decomposers are responsible to decompose dead plants and animals and yields various important minerals for the running of the natural cycles.
Social component of environment:
The third component of environment is social component.
This component is mainly consists of various groups of population of different living beings like birds, animals, etc.
Human is the most independent and intelligent living organism.
Like all other living creatures on earth, man constructs house, prepares food and delivers waste materials to the environment.
It has been said about human by Greek philosopher, Aristotle that human is a social animal.
He prepared various laws, policies for the proper functioning of the society.
These three components of the environment give rise to four important zones like Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Lithosphere and Biosphere.
There is continual interaction among these four zones.
These interactions include the transport of various elements, compounds and different forms of energy.