Environmental law

• Ecosystem is the interacting system made up of all the living and nonliving objects in a specific volume of space
• Abiotic Factor It is a non-living component in, the environment. This can be either a chemical or physical presence.
• Climatic factors include humidity,sunlight and factors involving the climate.
• Edaphic factors refer to soil conditions, so edaphic abiotic factors include soil and geography of the land.
• Social factors describe how human activity can impact the land and resources in the area, which include how the land is being used and water resources in the area
• Atmosphere It sustains life on Earth. Animals and other creatures breathe oxygen or filter it from water, while plants grow because of the presence of carbon dioxide in the air.
• Chemical Elements They make up all matter,including other abiotic factors. They act within the environment to impact what type of organisms can grow or thrive in the area.
• Sunlight/Temperature Temperature of the air and water affect animals, plants and humans in ecosystems. An increase in temperature can affect or change the way a living thing develops,since it directly affects the metabolic rate of the organism.
• Wind Often times abiotic factors are affected by other factors. This is especially true with wind. The wind speed and direction affects the temperature and humidity of an area. Very high wind speeds, often in mountainous areas, may lead to stunted plant growth and limit the types of life that can thrive in the area.
• Water All living organism needs some water to survive. Water counts for 70 percent of the earth's surface and falls as rain or snow over land, is essential to survival, but every organism needs a different amount of water
• Biotic Factors It is defined as the living components or factors that affect an ecosystem or other organisms living in that ecosystem. They are the participants in the food web',and they rely on each other for survival.
• Producers (Autotrophs)- These are the plants in the ecosystem, which can generate their own energy requirement through photosynthesis,in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll.
• Consumers (Heterotrophs)- These includes herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. The herbivores are the living organisms that feed on plants. Carnivores eat other living organisms.Omnivores are animals that can eat both plant and animal tissue
• A food chain outlines who eats whom
• A food web is all of the food chains in an ecosystem
• Producers who make their own food using photosynthesis or chemosynthesis, make up the bottom of the trophic pyramid.
• Autotrophs are self-sustaining, organisms (that is, those that can make their own food),they can use the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into simple, energy rich carbohydrates. They use the energy stored within the simple carbohydrates to produce the more complex organic compounds, such as proteins, lipids, and starches, that maintain the organisms' life processes.
• Heterotrophs are the consumers of the ecosystem; they cannot make their own food. They use, rearrange, and ultimately decompose the complex organic materials built up by the autotrophs.
• All animals and fungi are heterotrophs, as are most bacteria and many other microorganisms
• Decomposers (Detritivores) These are the fungi and bacteria, which are the saprophytes.They feed on. the decaying organic matter and convert this matter into nitrogen and carbon dioxide.

  The saprophytes play a vital role in recycling the nutrients so that the producers i.e. plants can use them once again
• Human ecology is about the relationship between people (human)and their environment (ecology) It views the biological,environmental, demographic, and technical conditions of the life of any people as an interrelated series of determinants of form and function in human cultures and social systems.
• Biodiversity refer to the idea of living variation,from genes and traits, to species, and to ecosystems (Faith, 2003). It refers;tothe varietyoflife on Earth at all its levels, from genes to ecosystems, and can encompass the evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that Sustain life. This includes not only species we consider rare, threatened,Or endangered but also every living thing from humans to organisms we know little about, such as microbes, fungi, and invertebrates
• Detritivores is an organism that feeds on dead and decomposing organic matter.
• Saprophytes that lives on dead or decaying organic matter.
• Species Diversity It is defined as the number of species and abundance of each species that live in a particular location.
• The number of species that live in a certain location is called species richness
• Abundance is the number of individuals of each species.
• Species diversity is a benchmark that can be used to evaluate the health of ecosystems. In a healthy ecosystem, a diverse and balanced number of species exist and maintain the equilibrium of the ecosystem
• Genetic Diversity It refers to the range of different inherited traits within a species. It ensures that certain groups of individuals, species, or populations will be able to adapt to certain environmental factors.
• genetic diversity renders them the ability to resist emerging diseases and epidemics
• Biome is a major regional community of plants and animals with similar life forms and environmental conditions. It is the largest geographic biotic unit, and is named after the dominant type of life form, such as tropical rain forest, grassland, or coral reef
• Ecosystem Diversity It refers to the number of ecosystems in a certain area. A more diverse ecosystem has more ecological niche more feeding relationships among organisms, more organisms that capture energy, and more species that recycle organic nutrients into inorganic forms.
• Functional Diversity It refers to those components of biodiversity that influence how an ecosystem operates or functions.
• Functional diversity is of high ecological importance because it is capable of influencing several aspects of ecosystem functioning like ecosystem dynamics, stability, nutrient availability,etc.
• Functional richness refers to the number of species inhabiting a particular niche
• functional evenness reveals how evenly the species are being distributed.
• The niche of an organism is the functional role that it plays within an ecosystem.
• Natural resources are resources that occur in nature without any manmade assistance These are useful raw materials that we get from the Earth. They occur naturally, which means that humans cannot make natural resources
• Renewable Resources are resources that can be used repeatedly and does not run out because it is naturally replaced commodities of which there is an endless supply. This includes but not limited to solar and wind energy, biomass energy, and hydropower
• Non-Renewable Resources are natural substances or materials that are not replenished with the speed at which it is consumed. It is a finite resource They are resources that cannot be naturally replenished at an adequate pace to meet growing demands, which includes but not limited to water, fossil fuels, natural gases, and minerals