What is the Environment?
#NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS X MANKIND = ECONOMIC ACTIVITY.
And mankind's ability to exploit minerals further expands the equation:
#(NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS + MINERAL RESOURCES) X MANKIND = ECONOMIC CTIVITY.
The way that mankind organises itself in order to maximise the efficiency of economic activity is manifested in human society because:
#ORGANISED ECONOMIC ACTIVITY = SOCIETY.
When we look at a landscape as a picture we see land-uses (e.g. roads, villages, cassava farms, plantations and processing plants) and ecological resources (e.g. rivers, forests, and soil). The picture is not an accident but the result of mankind's economic exploitation of the natural ecosystems for the resources that we need, and the social structure that has developed as a result of this exploitation.
The landscape represents human society's impact upon the environment. An impact which today is potentially more damaging to the ability of ecosystems to continue to provide the resources required of them, because of fast-growing human populations and inappropriate technology.
This is not academic theorising but a reality which must be grasped, especially in terms of efficient integrated, landuse planning which must work with human ecological, economic and social realities, not against them. Thus the present state of the ecological resources and land-uses of any country or region are best understood in terms of:
- the natural ecosystems;
- human economic impact;
- society; and
- the resulting human landscape.
3.4 LANDSCAPES ARE ALIVE
Ecology recognises that landscapes are alive. There is a dynamic relationship between their components, so that the landscape is always changing: not for one minute does it stay the same. Thus in ecology, landscapes are classified not just in terms of the components we have described, but in terms of life. The definitions below all refer to life: 'bios' is the ancient Greek for life.
3.4.1 THE BIOSPHERE
That part of the earth in which life occurs: from the bottom of the deepest ocean trench to the heights where the strongest bird can fly.
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