Physical Factors which

Make Up the Environment

Plant and Livestock

Microclimate
 Environment and Its Components
• The environment is defined as the whole physical
and biological system surrounding man and other
organism 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 the plants, animals and
microorganisms, etc.
 The environment has three
important constituents.

• These are:
• Physical
• Biological
• Social
 Physical Constituent

• The physical constituent of environment includes

soil, water, air, climate, temperature, light etc.
• These are also called constituents of the
environment
• This part of the environment mainly determines
the type of the habitat or living condition of the
human, animal and plants.
 This physical constituent of the
environment is again divided into
three parts.

• These are:
• Atmosphere (gas)
• Hydrosphere (liquid)
• Lithosphere (solid)
• These three parts represent the three
important states of matter constituting
the environment.
• This physical component of environment
only consist of non-living things like air,
water and soil.
• All these nonliving things influence much
to all living organism including man.
• Water and temperature are the most
important abiotic components affecting
living beings.
• Large 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 and
animals require oxygen for their existence.
• Oxygen is taken into the body by
respiration process and comes out in form
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 plants 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.
 The Biological Constituent
• The biological constituent of environment is
also called biotic component of
environment.
• This component consist 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.
• The self sufficient large ecosystem of the
earth is called Biosphere.
• All ecosystem consist of three different
types of living organisms.

• These three types are:

• Producers
• Consumers
• Decomposers
• Producers are generally green plants and
other photosynthetic bacteria which
produces various organic substance such
as carbohydrates, proteins, etc. with the
help of water, soil and light energy.
• Consumers depend for their nutrition on
the organic food produced by the green
plants.
• Decomposers bring about the
decomposition of dead plants and animals
and return various important minerals for
the running of the biogeochemical cycles.
 The Social Constituent
• The social constituent of environment
mainly consist of various groups of
population of different living organism 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.
• The three components of the environment
give rise to four important zones. These
are:
• Atmosphere
• Hydrosphere
• Lithosphere and
• Biosphere
• There is continuous interaction among
these four zones. These interactions
involve the transport of various elements,
compounds and energy forms. (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1 These zones are explained as follows.
 Atmosphere
• The earth’s atmosphere, a complex fluid
system of gases and suspended particles, did
not have its origin in tan be he beginning of
the planet.
• The atmosphere as of today has been derived
from the Earth itself by chemical and
biochemical reactions.
• Although the fluid system forms a gaseous
envelope around the Earth, its boundaries are
not easily defined.
• They can be arbitrarily defined as the Earth’s
atmosphere inter face and space interface.
• The gases like Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon,
Carbon Dioxide and water vapour etc.
together make up the total volume of
atmosphere.
• Together with suspended particulates, viz.
dust and soot constitute the gaseous
turbidity particularly in troposphere.
• However, the composition of atmosphere
and so also the structure is variable in time
and space.
 Hydrosphere
• It includes the surface water and its
surrounding interface.
• It is vital for life molecule to survive. Water
possesses a number of physical and
chemical properties that help the
molecule to act as best suited medium for
life activities. The movement of water
from earth surface to atmosphere through
hydrological cycle appears to be a close
system.
• Water is the most abundant substance on the
Earth’s surface.
• The oceans cover approximately 71% water if
the planet, glaciers and ice caps cover
additional areas.
• Water is also found in lakes and streams, in soils
and underground reservoirs, in the atmosphere,
and in the bodies of all living organism. Thus,
water in all its forms-ice, liquid, water and
water vapour-is very familiar to us.
• We use water at home, in industry, in
agriculture, and for recreation.
• These application differ widely in the
quantity and quality of the water that they
require.
• In one way or another we use all available
sources-inland waters, ground water, and
even oceanic water.
• The demand for global water resources
increasing day-by-day though availability
pure fresh water has been decreasing
severely.
• Thus there is need to make precious use of
pure fresh water and their fruitful storage
and conservation.
• A simplified outline of hydrological cycle in
(Fig. 3)
 Fig. 3
Hydrologic
(water) Cycle
 Lithosphere

• It is the outer boundary layer of solid earth

and the discontinuity within the mantle.
• The outer boundary forms a complex
interface with the atmosphere and
hydrosphere and is also the environment
in which life has evolved.
• The inner boundary is adjacent to rock,
which is near its melting point and is
capable of motion relative to the
lithosphere above.
• Basically lithosphere is nothing but a
crustal system composed of various
layers:
• Core,
• Mantle and outer crust.
• Various elements constitute such crustal
layer in mixture of different proportions. In
general, the earth crust is composed of
three major classes of rocks (as classified
on the basis of their mode of origin):
• Igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and
metamorphosed rocks.
• There are two types of crust – continental
crust which is composed of granitic rocks
in silicon aluminum and with a mean
density of 2.8;
• The other oceanic crust which is basaltic in
composition consisting of more basic
minerals and has a mean density of 3.0.
• Overall, the average density of the earth is
5.5 gm/cc
 Biosphere
• The biosphere encompasses all the zones on the
Earth in which life is present, i.e. entire bio-
resources of the earth.
• It develops on earth since 4.5 billion year
through evolutionary process. At the top of the
lithosphere, throughout the hydrosphere and
into the lower atmosphere, life of diverse type
exists.
• These bio-resources and their surrounding
constitute the “Biosphere” where mankind acts
as the most evolved creature.
• The steps involved in the origin of life on earth is
very complex and require several centuries.
Considerable uncertainly surrounds the details of
atmospheric composition, the processes involved
and even the sequence of some events leading to
formation of living cells.
• The conventional view held that the earliest
organism on the planet were heterotrophic and
prokaryotic bacteria. Subsequently, autotrophic &
eukaryotes start appearing as stepwise
evolutionary changes.
• Life on Earth requires water, a source of
energy (sun light) and various nutrients
found in the soil, water and air.
• Suitable combinations of these essentials
cannot be found high in the upper
atmosphere or deep underground.
• There exists only in a narrow layer near
the surface of the Earth.
• Within the biosphere, there are several major
regions containing specific types of ecosystems.
These major regions are called biomes. Biomes
are then recognized by the types of dominant
ecosystem-tropical rainforests, temperate
forests, prairies, deserts, and arctic tundra. The
ecosystem again are composed of population
which is composed of individuals. The global
estimate of species of both prokaryotes and
eukaryotic life forms are given in Table 1 and 2.
These figures imply the fact that how diverse is
our biological world on earth is?
Table 1. Estimates total microorganism in the world
Table 2. Number of Species by class (WRI, 1986)
Thank you for your attention.