Components of the Environment

By
Dr. O.K. Israel
Dept. of Community Medicine
LAUTECH, Ogbomoso

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 Introduction
What is an Environment?
• Everything in our immediate surroundings including living and non
living things is referred to as the environment.
• Environment can be defined as the natural surroundings of the
organism (man) which directly or indirectly influences the growth and
development of the organism (man).
• Environment is the sum total of all living and non living factors that
compose the surroundings of man.

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 Introduction
• Man cannot be separated from its environment.
• Man and his Environment have very close relationship with each other.
• The social life of man is affected by his environment.
• This is the reason for the various types of social and cultural activities
around the world.
• E.g. The hilly people have different life styles than people in the plain area.
• Similarly people around the world differ in their food, clothing, festivals etc.
• All these are influenced by the factors that surround them (man)

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Components of the environment
• Physical components
• Biological components
• Social-cultural components

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Components of the environment
• Physical Components:
• The Physical Components of environment includes soil, water, air,
climate, temperature, light etc.
• Physical Components of the environment can also be divided into
three parts.
• These are:
• Atmosphere (gas)
• Hydrosphere (liquid)
• Lithosphere (solid)

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Components of the environment
• Atmosphere: it is a gaseous layer that surrounds the planet.
• Hydrosphere: It includes all types of water bodies found on earth,
such as oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, ponds and streams.
• Lithosphere: It is the earth’s topmost layer, it is composed of several
minerals.

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Components of the environment
• Biological components:
• These are the biotic components of the environment.
• Biotic components: This consists of all living things e.g. plants,
animals and micro-organisms (bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc).
• This component interacts with the abiotic (non-living) component of
the environment.
• This interaction of the two components forms various ecosystems like
pond ecosystem, marine ecosystem, desert ecosystem etc.

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Components of the environment
• Biological components:
• The self sufficient large ecosystem of the earth is called Biosphere.
• All ecosystems consist of three different types of living organisms.
• (a) Producers
• (b) Consumers
• (c) Decomposers.
• Producers are generally green plants and other photosynthetic
bacteria which produces various organic substances such as
carbohydrates, proteins etc. with the help of water, soil and light
energy e.g. plants.
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Components of the environment
• Biological components:
• Consumers depend for their nutrition on the organic food produced
by the green plants e.g. animals.
• Decomposers bring about the decomposition of dead plants and
animals and return various important minerals for the running of the
biogeochemical cycles e.g. fungi, bacteria.

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Components of the environment
• Socio-cultural components:
• This consists of various groups of population of different living
organisms like birds, animals etc.
• Man is the most intelligent living organism.
• Like other living creatures, man builds house, prepares food and
releases waste materials to the environment.
• Man is a social animal as told by Greek philosopher, Aristotle. He
makes various laws, policies for the proper functioning of the society.

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Components of the environment
• Cultural Environment:
• The Cultural Environment gives an idea of learned behavioral traits
that are clear and shared by members of society
• The most important thing about the cultural environment is that it
cannot be physically represented, but it is there anyway.

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 Distinction between natural and man-made environment

• Environment means the surrounding conditions that effects the

lifestyle of living things.
• It includes biotic and abiotic components.
• Our surroundings includes natural and manmade things.
• Human life gets affected by the environment and hence we find
differences in the human life of different region.
• All components which come into existence naturally are included in
natural environment e.g. The landforms on the earth, the climate,
soils, minerals, sunlight etc are components of our natural
environment
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 Distinction between natural and man-made environment

• In order to enrich his life, man has used many natural resources and in
this process he has brought many changes in natural environment.
Human settlements, roads, buildings, dams etc have developed
through this.
• In the environment there are many interaction that goes on between
the manmade and the natural environment which may be beneficial
or detrimental to human health.

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THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

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