What is environment? What are it’s components? Explain the function of each component.
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
In other words environment refers to those surroundings that surrounds living beings from all sides and affect their lives in toto. It consists of atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. It's chief components are soil, water, air, organisms and solar energy.
Explanation:
The environment is defined as the whole physical and biological system surrounding man and other organisms along with various factors influencing them. The factors are soil, air, water, light, temperature etc. These are called Abiotic factors. Besides the abiotic factors, the environment is very much influenced by biotic factors which include all forms of life like plants, animals, microorganisms etc.
Man is thus an inseparable part of the environment. Man and Environment have very close relationship with each other. The social life of man is affected by environment. This is the reason for various types of social and cultural activities around the world. The hilly people have different life styles than people in the plain area. Similarly people around the world differ in their food, cloth, festivals etc. All these are influenced by the factors around him.
The environment has three important constituents. These are:
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(a) Physical
(b) Biological
(c) Social
(a) The Physical Constituent of environment includes soil, water, air, climate, temperature, light etc. These are also called abiotic constituents of the environment. This part of the environment mainly determines the type of the habitat or living conditions of the human population. This physical constituent of the environment is again divided into three parts.
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These are:
(i) Atmosphere (gas)
(ii) Hydrosphere (liquid)
(iii) Lithosphere (solid)
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These three parts represent the three important states of matter constituting the environment. This physical component of environment only consists of non-living things like air, water and soil. All these nonliving things influence much to all living organisms including man. Water and temperature are the most important abiotic components affecting living beings. Larger proportion of body’s weight is due to water.
All living organisms require water for their survival. Besides water is the main vital fluid to keep optimum temperature of the body. All life activates work in a particular range of temperature. When temperature will be in excess of necessity, living beings will die.
Air is main physical component which provides oxygen for respiration. All living beings including plants & animals require oxygen for their existence. Oxygen is taken into the body by respiration process and comes out in from of carbon dioxide. Plants, on the other hand takes in carbon dioxide for food preparation during photosynthesis and gives out oxygen to the surrounding.
Soil is the most important for all living beings to create their habitat. It is the soil in which plant grows and man constructs houses to live in. It is the ground water present in the soil which provides for drinking and other farming activities.
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(b) The biological constituent of environment is also called biotic component of environment. This component consists of all living things like plants, animals and small micro-organisms like bacteria. This component interacts with the abiotic component of the environment. This interaction of two components forms various ecosystems like pond ecosystem, marine ecosystem, desert ecosystem etc.