Environment

 ENVIRONMENT

Environment literally means the surrounding and everything that affects an organism during its lifetime, collectively known as its environment.

In other words,”Environment is the sum of the components of water, air and land; inter-relationships among them and also with human beings, other living organisms and property”.  

It includes all the physical and biological surroundings and their interactions.

  The environment broadly consists of two types of components

i.   Abiotic Components   Abiotic components of the environment include non-living elements like-land, water and air.

 Ii.    Biotic components    Biotic components of the environment include all the life forms like plants, animals, decomposers.

Types of Environment

There are three types of environment:

i)  Natural Environment  It consists of all abiotic (non-living) and biotic(living) components, which exist naturally on Earth.

ii)  Man-Made Environment  It consists of those places which are artificially made by man by planned manipulation.  It includes crop fields, urban centres, industrial set-ups etc.

iii) Social Environment  It includes cultural norms and values prevailing in a particular society.  It also includes the network of political, economic and religious institutions which often decide the environmental resources to be utilised by the people.