ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
by Rossel R. Mendiola
GE 10 - X
What is the environment? Environment is everything around us, including living and nonliving things like soil, water, animals and plants that have adapted to their environment. It is a gift of
nature that nourishes life on earth. The environment plays an important role for the existence of
life on planet Earth. The word “environment” is derived from the French word "environ" which
means "around".
Environmental science is one of the branches of life sciences that mainly deals with the study
of organisms and their interactions with their environment. The term "environmental science" refers
to a group of scientific disciplines that are all related to the physical, chemical, and biological
properties of the environment in which an organism lives.
In fact, environmental science relies on a team of people with technical skills and
competencies in many areas of expertise, including statistical modeling, computer programming,
and data analysis. Environmental science also has a symbiotic relationship with a number of other
scientific disciplines, which are an integral part of environmental scientific studies. Here are some
of the most important areas that are part of environmental science: Atmospheric science is an
umbrella term for a group of distinct fields related to Earth's atmosphere, including climatology,
meteorology, atmospheric chemistry and physics; Environmental chemistry studies chemical and
biochemical processes in the natural world and the impact of human activity on these processes;
Agricultural and forestry science focuses on management and sustainability issues in agriculture,
agriculture, national parks, wetlands and wildlife habitats. Biodiversity, soil health, waste and
pollution reduction, botany, horticulture, and the elements of food and health sciences are among
the concerns of forest scientists and agriculture; Geoscience, which includes geology, geography,
geodesy, volcanology, mineralogy, geophysics, geochemistry, and geoinformatics, is essentially earth
science. Geoscience overlaps with atmospheric science and oceanography, but tends to focus on
exploring features of the soil, from volcanism and mineral formations to magnetic fields and plate
tectonics; and oceanography and marine science is the study of our oceans, which are the largest
ecosystems on our planet.
Now let's dive deeper into one of the most important areas of environmental science, that of
environmental chemistry. Environmental chemistry is the science that studies chemical and
biochemical phenomena that occur in natural places. It can be defined as the study of the origin,
reaction, transport, influence and fate of chemical species in the air, soil and water; and the effects
of human and biological activity on them. Environmental chemistry is an interdisciplinary science
that encompasses atmospheric, aquatic, and soil chemistry, as well as is highly dependent on
analytical chemistry and is related to the environment and other scientific fields.
Biodiversity, on the other note, refers to the various life forms that exist on earth, including
animals, plants, microorganisms and the entire ecosystem in which they inhabit. Biodiversity takes
the form of biological resources, including genes, species, organisms and ecosystems. . Thus, the
four main levels of biodiversity are: Genetic diversity includes all the different types of genetic
information contained in animals, microorganisms and plants. An organism with genetic diversity
exhibits a higher ability to adapt and survive to adverse environmental conditions than a monotypic
organism with the same genetic makeup; Species diversity refers to the variety of organisms in the
environment. They can be divided into: species richness is the total number of species in a given
region or locality; the abundance, especially, is the relative number of organisms between species
(the number of individuals of each species); Taxonomic (phylogenetic) diversity is the genetic
relationship that exists between different groups of species. This type of diversity is represented
using a hierarchical classification based on the phylogenetic evolution of different species of
organisms; Ecosystem diversity is relatively similar to species diversity, except that it refers to the
variations of ecosystems within a geographical location.
Moving on to the different layers of the atmosphere based on their temperature, namely:
troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere. The troposphere is the lowest part of
the atmosphere in which we live. It contains most of our weather clouds, rain, snow. In this part of
the atmosphere, temperatures cool as distances on earth increase, about 6.5°C per km. The
stratosphere extends upwards from the tropics to about 50 km. The mesosphere is the region above
the stratosphere known as the mesosphere. Here, the temperature drops again with altitude,
reaching a minimum of about 90°C at the "pause". The atmosphere is above the mean region and
is a region where the temperature rises again with altitude. This increase in temperature is due
to the absorption of ultraviolet and energetic X-rays from the sun. The region above about 500 km
is called the exosphere. It consists mainly of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, but very few of them
rarely collide, they follow "ballistic" orbits under the influence of gravity, and some of them escape
into space. time.
But why do we have to know about the atmosphere? Is it something important? Atmosphere
matters for a number of reasons! One reason is that the earth's atmosphere acts as an insulating
layer that protects the earth's surface from light and intense heat from the sun. The atmosphere
protects us from UV rays and other short-wavelength light that would otherwise cause a lot of DNA
damage to living organisms. Without the atmosphere, it would be very hot during the day and
extremely cold at night! Earth's relatively thin atmosphere is mainly composed of a mixture of
nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). The remaining 1% contains some inactive gases (i.e. argon, neon,
helium, hydrogen and xenon) and several other gases of varying concentrations (i.e. water vapor,
carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and chlorofluorocarbons). Although water vapor and
carbon dioxide make up a very small amount of the gases in the Earth's atmosphere, they are
important because of their ability to absorb heat.
Now let’s jump to the idea of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is a theory based on the
work of James Hutton and popularized in the 19th century by Charles Lyell. This theory claims that
the forces and processes observed at the Earth's surface are forces and processes that have shaped
the Earth's landscape throughout natural history. James Hutton explains this idea in his book The
Theory of the Earth, "...we found no trace of a beginning - no prospect of an end." Hutton was the
first scientist to conclude that the age of the Earth must be so old that the mind cannot estimate
its length.
Over a long period of time, the Earth has undergone many changes for the sake of us humans.
Some changes are good and some are bad. One of the bad changes that has occurred has led to a
larger environmental problem, which is global warming. Global warming is the long-term warming
of the Earth's climate system observed since pre-industrial times due to human activities, mainly
burning. fossil fuels, which increase the level of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the earth's
atmosphere. t is usually measured as the average increase in Earth's global surface temperature.