Elements of the environment and the environmental system

The environment includes different “living environments” of very variable sizes: a forest, a field, a lawn, an old wall…etc. We therefore distinguish 3 elements in our environment:

* Living beings: any being that is born, grows, eats, emits waste, reproduces and dies.

* The non-living: The non-living cannot reproduce. It includes mineral components (gaseous atmosphere, water, rocks), elements from living things and human production.

a. Mineral components

• The gaseous atmosphere contains different gases: approximately four-fifths of dinitrogen (commonly called nitrogen), one-fifth of dioxygen, traces of carbon dioxide (formerly called carbon dioxide) and rare gases, plus water vapor or less quantity.

• Water can be fresh or salty, frozen, liquid or gaseous. It occupies four fifths of the earth's surface. It is a fundamental constituent of the environment.

• Soil is the thin layer between the atmosphere and the subsoil. It comes from the decomposition of living beings after their death and the degradation of underground rocks.

• The subsoil contains rocks that differ depending on where you are and the conditions that prevailed there.

b. Elements from living things and human productions

• A bird feather, a piece of wood, a leaf fallen from a tree, etc. and all animal corpses are no longer part of life because they are no longer capable of reproducing.

• All human productions are part of the non-living: a painting, a computer, a building, a car, etc.

* The relationships between the environment components

1. Living beings establish relationships with each other:

• males and females of the same species reproduce (deer and doe);

• some parents take care of their young (the whale, the scorpion);

• all living beings, with the exception of plants, feed at the expense of other living beings (the rabbit eats carrots, the owl eats field mice, the mushroom feeds on decomposed matter);

• plants shelter animals (the jay nests in an oak tree).

2. Living beings also establish relationships with the mineral world: they drink water, breathe the air that surrounds them, use the ground or rocks as a support to settle or as a point of support for moving around.