Humans have two worlds. One is the natural world that consist of plants, animals, air, water and soils that surrounds us for billions of years and we are part of it. The other world is social institutions and aircraft that humans made for their convenience. Both worlds are necessary for our survival. But their integration causes many tensions.
The earlier people were not able much to alter their surroundings. But now a days we are able to change our environment and consume the resources, produce waste and modify our world in a way we want. For sustainable future we have to understand about what is in our surroundings?, how this world works?, what are we doing in it?, and how can we protect it?
The word Environment comes from a french word environner that means to encircle or surround.
Environment is defined as conditions or circumstances that surrounds an organism. OR
It is defined as Complex social and cultural conditions affecting any individual or community.
What is System?
In technical terms system is defined as set of components gathered to function together. Most systems are hierarchical where smaller interacting parts made smaller sets of systems.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
It is the systematic study of environment and our proper place in it. It is a new field and integrates the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities in broad.
TRAITS FOR ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM
Global environment is seen in three traits: openness, integration and complexity.
1) OPENNESS
Openness defines whether a system is isolated from the other system. An open system is not isolated from the other systems and it shares the energy and matter with other systems. A closed system is rather isolated and no exchanges takes place there.
Law of entropy is defined as energy cannot be recycled rather the high quality energy is degraded into low quality energy such as waste heat. Earth is an open system in terms of energy. Earth is a closed system in terms of matter.
2) INTEGRATION
It is the strength of interactions taking place n parts of systems. For example human body systems are interdependent to each other. If any cells of body such as those making the brain or heart loss from body than the human die because all the cells in body integrates.
Gaia Hypothesis describes that earth works just like human body. Earth components that are integrated aaare like human body cells integration.
3) COMPLEXITY
It define that how many parts of systems are integrated. E.g. An insect looks more complex than a large rock because it contains many parts (cells). The insect has more complex molecules. These molecules combined to make an organ. This example describes that complexity is hierarchical . Some components made larger ones.
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