Environment
Biological diversity is key to a healthy ecosystem, whether it’s a small biological community or the global biosphere. Ecology, which studies the relationships between organisms and their environment, is an invaluable science that helps us understand what allows an ecological community to thrive.
Environment Encyclopedia Articles
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conservation
Conservation, study of the loss of Earth’s biological diversity and the ways this loss can be prevented. Biological diversity, or biodiversity, is the variety of life either in a particular place or on...
Environmental Protection Agency
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), agency of the U.S. government that sets and enforces national pollution-control standards. In 1970, in response to the welter of confusing, often ineffective environmental...
hydrosphere
Hydrosphere, discontinuous layer of water at or near Earth’s surface. It includes all liquid and frozen surface waters, groundwater held in soil and rock, and atmospheric water vapour. Water is the most...
environment
Environment, the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival. The Earth’s environment is treated...
recycling
Recycling, recovery and reprocessing of waste materials for use in new products. The basic phases in recycling are the collection of waste materials, their processing or manufacture into new products,...
atmosphere
Atmosphere, the gas and aerosol envelope that extends from the ocean, land, and ice-covered surface of a planet outward into space. The density of the atmosphere decreases outward, because the gravitational...
climate change
Climate change, periodic modification of Earth’s climate brought about as a result of changes in the atmosphere as well as interactions between the atmosphere and various other geologic, chemical, biological,...
tropical rainforest
Tropical rainforest, luxuriant forest found in wet tropical uplands and lowlands around the Equator. Tropical rainforests, which worldwide make up one of Earth’s largest biomes (major life zones), are...
sustainability
Sustainability, the long-term viability of a community, set of social institutions, or societal practice. In general, sustainability is understood as a form of intergenerational ethics in which the environmental...
environmental law
Environmental law, principles, policies, directives, and regulations enacted and enforced by local, national, or international entities to regulate human treatment of the nonhuman world. The vast field...