environmental science - an exposure

8/4/2019 Environmental Science - An Exposure

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Environmental Science - An

Exposure What is the Environment?

How is Ecology -the discipline, defined?

What is an Ecosystem and what are its main components ?

Food Web and Food Chains The Water Cycle

What is pollution and what is its impact on the

ecosystem?

What is Air Pollution and what are its implications for our

lives

Water Pollution and its implications for our lives

Bioaccumulation and biomagnification


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Ecology

Ecology is derived from the Greek oikoes(house) and logos (knowledge). It is astudy of the relation of organisms to their

environment or in more simple termsenvironmental biology.

Concerned especially with the biologyof groups of organisms and with functionalprocesses on the lands, in the oceans andin fresh waters


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Ecosystem and its components

A functional system which includes theorganisms of a natural community together withtheir environment is an Ecosystem.

All communities or natural assemblages oforganisms which live together and interact withone another are closely related to theirenvironments

It is appropriate to therefore conceive of acommunity and environment as forming a single,complex whole -The Ecosystem


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Ecosystem and its componentsThe Ecosystem involves an interaction between the abiotic and biotic components

Environment and community are always intimately interrelated. As a result ofthis interrelatedness any small change in one part of the environment/ communitymanifests itself in the entire ecosystem. In the ecosystem, material is cycled while energy is taken up from theenvironment, moves through the community and is dissipated back into theenvironment.


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Food Chain, Food Web and

Trophic levels


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The Water Cycle


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Pollution Alteration in the conditions of the environment by the

introduction of natural and anthropogenic contaminants.

Pollution can thus be caused by natural sources such asvolcanic eruptions, forest fires etc.. and anthropogenicsources which may be mobile sources (vehicles),stationary sources (industries, cooking stoves).

The categorization of pollution sources may also bemade on the basis of whether they are point sources (airor water pollution by industrial sources, water pollutionfrom domestic sewage sources etc..), line sources (airpollution by traffic) or area sources (water pollution due

to water run-off from agricultural fields which maycontain pesticides, fertilizers etc..)

The various components of the ecosystem i.e.., air,water, soil and the living organisms associated with eachcomponent are interrelated. Any change in one

component will have an impact on the balance of theentire ecosystem.


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Pollution

From the water cycle we can see thatbecause of the cyclic nature of materials, if thereis a change in any one step of the cycle, the

entire ecosystem can get affected. Sulphur dioxide from industrial sources

pollution of the air forms sulphuric acidwith moisture in the air acid rain

affects the lakes, rivers, oceans etc.health of living organisms affected, materials

corrode ecosystem stability affected.


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Air Pollution


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Air Pollution


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Water Pollution

Bi l i d Bi ifi i


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Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification


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Soil Pollution

environmental science - an exposure

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