For the biology term, see Environment (biophysical). For other uses, see Environment.
"Natural force" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Natural Force.
Land management has preserved the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia while allowing ample access for visitors.
Satellite image of the Sahara desert; the world's largest hot desert and third-largest desert after the polar deserts.
The
natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather, and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity.
[1] The concept of the
natural environment can be distinguished as components:
- Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, atmosphere, and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature.
- Universal natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water, and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge, and magnetism, not originating from civilized human activity.
In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. In such areas where man has fundamentally transformed landscapes such as urban settings and agricultural land conversion,
the natural environment is greatly modified into a simplified human
environment. Even acts which seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert,
modify the natural environment into an artificial one. Though many
animals build things to provide a better environment for themselves,
they are not human, hence beaver dams and the works of Mound-building termites are thought of as natural.
People seldom find
absolutely natural environments on Earth,
and naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one
extreme to 0% natural in the other. More precisely, we can consider the
different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their
degree of naturalness is not uniform.
[2] If, for instance, in an agricultural field, the mineralogic composition and the structure of its soil are similar to those of an undisturbed forest soil, but the structure is quite different.
Natural environment is often used as a synonym for habitat. For instance, when we say that the natural environment of giraffes is the savanna.
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