Concept of environment and ecology
- The combination of biotic and abiotic factors composes environment, which surrounds us and other organisms.
- Abiotic factors includes water, air, soil, light, temperature, etc that affects human beings the least.
- Biotic factors are other factors that influence the environment much more in comparison to abiotic factors.
- Biotic factors consists all forms of life like animals, plants, micro-organisms, etc.
- Human is an incorporated part of the environment and have very intimate relationship with each other.
- The environment where human lives affects the social of human.
- It has been observed that water, soil, climate and language of human differ from one place to other which is responsible for the generation of various types of social and cultural activities all over the world.
- The people at hills have distinct life styles as compared to people in the low land area. Similarly, people around the world differ in their food, cloth, traditions, festivals, etc. All these are affected by the factors around them.
- A. G. Tensley coined the term ecology.
- The study of interaction and inter-relationship between an organism of some kind and its environment is termed as ecology.
- In ecology, ecological ‘Niche’ is role of an organism or species played in ecosystem.
- An organism niches consists everything that are influenced by the organism independent of its lifetime.
- Ecology is studied to understand how nature interacts with living systems and how living systems respond to nature.
- Thus, ecology is a study that helps scientist to achieve new motives by developing technical methods to protect the natural environment.
- Environmental biotechnology can play a crucial role in balancing interaction level of biotic and abiotic systems by developing these advanced methods for preserving environment and ecological system.
- Ecology has been defined as a study of interaction among living beings viz. animal, plants and their environment.
- Ecology may be studied with particular reference to either animals or plants.
- Thus, it can be divided in to animal ecology and plant ecology.
- It is difficult to study animal ecology completely without having a proper knowledge of plant ecology.
- The animal and plants are given equal emphasis; thus the term bioecology is often used.
- The term ‘Synecology’ refers to the study of relation of communities with environment.
- The term ‘autecology’ refers to the study of relation of species with environment.
Components of environment
- 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 emvironment.
- 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 environement:
- 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.