Portal:Environment

Welcome to the Environment Portal
(image link)

Introduction

The natural environment or natural world encompasses all biotic and abiotic things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to 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. 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, plateaus, mountains, the 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 actions.

In contrast to the natural environment is the built environment. Built environments are those in which humans have fundamentally transformed landscapes such as in urban settings and agricultural land conversion. Even in acts that seem less extreme, such as building a mud hut or a photovoltaic system in the desert, the modified environment is considered artificial. 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 considered natural.

There are no absolutely natural environments on Earth. Naturalness usually varies in a continuum, from 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. The massive environmental changes of humanity in the Anthropocene have fundamentally affected all natural environments including: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution from plastic and other chemicals in the air and water. More precisely, considering the different aspects or components of an environment, it becomes apparent that their degree of naturalness is not uniform. For instance, in an agricultural field, the mineralogic composition is quite similar to that of undisturbed forest soil while the structure is quite different. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article - show another

The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (1989–2001) was an international lobbyist group of businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and engaged in climate change denial, publicly challenging the science behind global warming. The GCC was the largest industry group active in climate policy and the most prominent industry advocate in international climate negotiations. The GCC was involved in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, and played a role in blocking ratification by the United States. The coalition knew it could not deny the scientific consensus, but sought to sow doubt over the scientific consensus on climate change and create manufactured controversy.

The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was formed in 1989 as a project under the auspices of the National Association of Manufacturers. The GCC was formed to represent the interests of the major producers and users of fossil fuels, to oppose regulation to mitigate global warming and to challenge the science behind global warming. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that researchers estimated that training the model for ChatGPT used the equivalent energy footprint of "driving 123 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles for a year"?
... that Maciej Grabowski became the Polish minister of environment in 2013 despite having no environmental experience?
... that the volcano Carachipampa is surrounded by a lake and a salt flat, and has a Mars-like environment?
... that environmental journalist Gloria Dickie wrote her thesis on how cities in Colorado changed garbage laws to prevent bear incursions?
... that the urban environment around Glasgow's Argyle Street ash tree may have helped it to survive ash dieback disease?
... that Flathead Lake Biological Station can detect invasive aquatic species in real-time using eDNA technology?
... that environmental destruction can be a means of genocide?
... that the plateau vole handles hypoxia at high altitudes by producing more hemoglobin and metabolizing glucose?

Selected image - show another

Credit: Staecker

The diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for irrigation has shrunk the Aral Sea dramatically. The sea's surface area shrank by approximately 60%, and its volume by 80%. In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth-largest lake, with an area of approximately 68,000 km² and a volume of 1100 km³; by 1998, it had dropped to 28,687 km², and eighth-largest. Over the same time period its salinity has increased from about 10 g/l to about 45 g/l. As of 2004, the Aral Sea's surface area was only 17,160 km², 25% of its original size, and still contracting.

More selected images

Read more...

Current events

News

...Environmental news at Wikinews

Environmental events in 2026...

Selected biography - show another

Attenborough in 2018

Sir David Frederick Attenborough (/ˈætənbərə/ AT-ən-bər-ə; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, natural historian, and writer. His presenting career began as host of Zoo Quest in 1954, and has spanned seven decades; it includes the nine documentary series forming The Life Collection, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and Frozen Planet. He is the only person to have won BAFTA Awards in black-and-white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolution. Over his life, he has collected dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator and one Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Personality – Non-Daily.

Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, working as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. While his earlier work focused primarily on the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support for environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption and setting aside more areas for natural preservation. On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated that Attenborough "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, though he does not embrace the term. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

Selected organization - show another

The Global Footprint Network was founded in 2003 and is an independent think tank originally based in the United States, Belgium and Switzerland. It was established as a charitable not-for-profit organization in each of those three countries. Its aim is to develop and promote tools for advancing sustainability, including the ecological footprint and biocapacity, which measure the amount of resources we use and how much we have. These tools aim at bringing ecological limits to the center of decision-making. (Full article...)

List of selected organizations

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various environment-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The Shen Neng 1 aground on the Great Barrier Reef, 5 April 2010 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 2Spiny forest at Ifaty, Madagascar, featuring various Adansonia (baobab) species, Alluaudia procera (Madagascar ocotillo) and other vegetation (from Ecosystem)
Image 3Catchments along the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 4Trichodesmium bloom off the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 5A false color composite of the greater Boston area, created using remote sensing technology, reveals otherwise not visible characteristics about the land cover and the health of the surrounding ecosystems. (from Environmental science)
Image 6Compartments established by C&SF projects that separated the historic Everglades into Water Conservation Areas and the Everglades Agricultural Area. One-fourth of the original Everglades is preserved in Everglades National Park. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 7A portion of the C-38 canal, finished in 1971, now backfilled to restore the Kissimmee River floodplain to a more natural state (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 8Proportion of forest area by forest area density class and global ecological zone, 2015, from Food and Agriculture Organization publication The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief (from Ecoregion)
Image 9A major coral bleaching event took place on this part of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 10A map of the Amazon rainforest, which is composed of multiple ecoregions. The yellow line encloses the ecoregions within the Amazon per the World Wide Fund for Nature. (from Ecoregion)
Image 11Summary of a machine learning-based analysis of the global literature on climate change and human health (from Environmental science)
Image 12Wetland habitat types in Borneo (from Habitat)
Image 13Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking monograph, Silent Spring, in 1962, bringing the study of environmental science to the forefront of society. (from Environmental science)
Image 14Biodiversity of a coral reef. Corals adapt and modify their environment by forming calcium carbonate skeletons. This provides growing conditions for future generations and forms a habitat for many other species. (from Environmental science)
Image 15Roseate spoonbills, along with other wading birds, have decreased by 90% since the 1930s and 1940s. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 16Tropical Cyclone Larry over the Great Barrier Reef, 19 March 2006 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 17Biological nitrogen cycling (from Ecosystem)
Image 18
A freshwater lake in Gran Canaria, an island of the Canary Islands. Clear boundaries make lakes convenient to study using an ecosystem approach.
(from Ecosystem)
Image 19The leaves of an Alnus nepalensis tree provide a microhabitat for species like the leaf beetle Aulacophora indica. (from Habitat)
Image 20Climbing ferns overtake cypress trees in the Everglades. The ferns act as "fire ladders" that can destroy trees that would otherwise survive fires. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 21Structure 65B on the Kissimmee River is destroyed by the Corps of Engineers in 2000 to restore the natural flow of the river. (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 22Current water drainage patterns in South Florida in 2005 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 23Dense mass of white crabs at a hydrothermal vent, with stalked barnacles on right (from Habitat)
Image 24Funding for climate change research in the natural and technical sciences compared to that in the social sciences and humanities according to the study "The misallocation of climate research funding" (from Environmental science)
Image 25A BERTopic-based analysis of studies shows an increase in the research about climate change tipping points (from Environmental science)
Image 26Environmental science is the academic discipline with the largest change in the number of works per year in OpenAlex after one decade compared to the output in 2015. A 2025 study found that for 1365 identified papers about environmental degradation, the annual number of papers increased tenfold between 2016 to 2022 A similar study found articles related to the carbon footprint of economic growth surged after 2017 (from Environmental science)
Image 27Crown-of-thorns starfish and eaten coral off the coast of Cooktown, Queensland (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 28Desert scene in Egypt (from Habitat)
Image 29The High Peaks Wilderness Area in the 6,000,000-acre (2,400,000 ha) Adirondack Park is an example of a diverse ecosystem. (from Ecosystem)
Image 30Natural water drainage patterns prior to development in South Florida, circa 1900 (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 31Environement - Tropical environment (from Environmental science)
Image 32Few creatures make the ice shelves of Antarctica their habitat, but water beneath the ice can provide habitat for multiple species. Animals such as penguins have adapted to live in very cold conditions. (from Habitat)
Image 33Environmental science examines the effects of humans on nature, such as the Glen Canyon Dam in the United States. (from Environmental science)
Image 34Ibex in an alpine habitat (from Habitat)
Image 35A team of British researchers found a hole in the ozone layer forming over Antarctica, the discovery of which would later influence the Montreal Protocol in 1987. (from Environmental science)
Image 36Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. (from Ecosystem)
Image 37Flora of Baja California desert, Cataviña region, Mexico (from Ecosystem)
Image 38This coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area provides habitat for numerous marine species. (from Habitat)
Image 39Planned water recovery and storage implementation using CERP strategies (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 40Blue Marble composite images generated by NASA in 2001 (left) and 2002 (right) (from Environmental science)
Image 41View of Earth, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew. Approximately 71% of Earth's surface (an area of some 361 million square kilometers) consists of ocean (from Ecoregion)
Image 42A protest against the Adani Carmichael mine, 2016 (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 43Loch Lomond in Scotland forms a relatively isolated ecosystem. The fish community of this lake has remained stable over a long period until a number of introductions in the 1970s restructured its food web. (from Ecosystem)
Image 44The Amazon River in Brazil. (from Ecoregion)
Image 45The Ötztal Alps, a mountain range in the central Alps of Europe, are part of the Central Eastern Alps, and can both be termed as ecoregions. (from Ecoregion)
Image 46Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al. 2001, BioScience) (from Ecoregion)
Image 47Rich rainforest habitat in Dominica (from Habitat)
Image 48Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time (from Ecosystem)
Image 49The Paris Agreement (formerly the Kyoto Protocol) is adopted in 2016. Nearly every country in the United Nations has signed the treaty, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (from Environmental science)
Image 50Rainforest ecosystems are rich in biodiversity. This is the Gambia River in Senegal's Niokolo-Koba National Park. (from Ecosystem)
Image 51Aerial view of stormwater treatment areas in the northern Everglades bordered by sugarcane fields on the right (from Restoration of the Everglades)
Image 52Twenty-five years after the devastating eruption at Mount St. Helens, United States, pioneer species have moved in. (from Habitat)
Image 53Acropora with brown band disease, Lizard Island (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 54Sea temperature and bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 55Storage Silos on the Gladstone waterfront, an industrial area in the water catchment area (from Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef)
Image 56A conifer forest in the Swiss Alps (from Ecoregion)
Image 57WWF terrestrial ecoregions (from Ecoregion)
Image 58An Antarctic rock split apart to show endolithic lifeforms showing as a green layer a few millimeters thick (from Habitat)
Image 59The Earth's atmosphere (from Environmental science)
Image 60Cattails indicate the presence of phosphorus in the water. Cattails are an invasive species; they crowd out sawgrass and grow too thick to allow nesting for birds and alligators. (from Restoration of the Everglades)

Selected quote - show another

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.

— Mother Teresa

More selected quotes

More...

More did you know - show different entries

...that in United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report, average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years?

... that the idea of atmospheric gases trapping the Suns heat to produce the greenhouse effect was put forward by Joseph Fourier in the 1820’s?

... that the global ecological footprint is 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita?

... that rivers have been classified by many criteria, including their topography, their biotic status and their relevance to white water rafting and canoeing activities?

... that Liberian lawyer Alfred Brownell won the "Green Nobel" prize for his efforts to protect more than 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) of tropical forest land?

More did you know facts