There are various types of pollution i.e. air, water, land, noise, industrial, soil, light, thermal etc. and they are categorized based on the region of the environment which they negatively impact, contributing to the multiple causes of pollution. Accordingly, each and every type of pollution has its own distinguishing causes and environmental effects. Understanding pollution …

Rocks ordinarily lie everywhere on the ground of the earth. They constitute most of the landforms, as we often notice. For instance, rocks make up the mountains and most of the non-water portions of the earth’s surface. A rock is hence defined as a solid naturally occurring mass or lumps of consolidated mineral matter that …

Biomagnification stands for Biological Magnification, which means the increase of contaminated substances or toxic chemicals that take place in the food chains. These substances often arise from intoxicated or contaminated environments. The contaminants include heavy metals namely mercury, arsenic, pesticides such as DDT, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) compounds which are then taken up by organisms …

Eutrophication is characterized by dense algal and plant growth owing to increased concentration of chemical nutrients needed for photosynthesis. It mainly arises from the oversupply of phosphate and nitrate nutrients. As such, increased levels of chemical nutrients from animal waste, fertilizers and sewage often give rise to eutrophication when washed into nearby surface waters by …

The Pacific Ring of Fire is the terminology given to a u-shaped area that is almost forming a ring or a circle in the Pacific Ocean expanding all the way from South America and North America to Eastern Asia, New Zealand and Australia. The stretch is approximately 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) from New Zealand, all …

Landforms are the natural properties and shapes prevalent on the earth’s surface. These basically consist of the solid parts of the planet which start from the mountains and end in the ridges in the ocean. That means, everything in between are different types of landforms. With diverse physical characteristics, landforms are spread throughout the planet. …

Wind can be defined as air currents or moving mass of air from high-pressure areas to low-pressure areas. Typically, air under high pressure normally moves towards areas under low pressure. Thus, the greater the pressure difference, the faster the flow of air which creates moving air with a considerably strong force. The bulk movement of …

Clouds are composed of ice crystals or water drops suspended and drifting in the sky at considerably high altitudes. The water droplets are very minute with a diameter of roughly a hundredth of a millimeter. This means that each cubic meter of air is made up of about 100 million droplets. The composition of ice …

Biomes are a group of ecosystems sharing the same characteristics and are well adapted to the prevailing abiotic factors. Any earth surface that has got a very large ecological system characterized by dominant forms of plant and animal life forms adapted to the prevailing climate and other environmental factors is termed as a biome. Biomes …

The earth is technically the 3rd planet from the sun between Venus and Mars and has an equatorial diameter of 12,755 kilometers (7926 miles) and a polar diameter of 149.6 million kilometers (92.9 million miles). The earth is in a constant state of motion as it revolves round the sun, which takes a period of …

Water scarcity or water crisis or water shortage is the deficiency of adequate water resources that can meet the water demands for a particular region. Whenever there is a lack of access to potable and fresh water for drinking and sanitation, the situation means that the water is scarce. Water scarcity thus pertains to a …

Rocks, minerals, soils normally change their structure under the action or influence of certain environmental forces. Biological activity, extreme weather, and agents of erosion such as water, wind and ice are examples of environmental forces that influences the continuous breakdown, wearing away and loosening of rocks and soils. This is what is termed as weathering. …

Ecological footprint is a terminology that attempts to gauge the extent of human impact on the earth’s ecosystems. There are many ways humans deplete environment capital just from our basic lifestyles to resource exploitation, environmental degradation, and pollution. As our consumption increases due to overpopulation, it is important for us to measure nature’s capacity to …

Plate tectonics defines the movements and features of the Earth’s surface now and in the past. The theory of plate tectonics was advanced in the 1960s and 1970s to generate new information about the Earth’s ancient magnetism, the nature of the ocean floor, the flow of heat from the Earth’s interior, and earthquake and volcanic …

Metamorphic rocks are the rocks formed from other rocks. They are sedimentary or igneous rocks that have undergone changes as a result of extreme pressure and heat. The name defines their formation whereby ‘meta’ means change and ‘morph’ means ‘form.’ Hence, metamorphic rocks are those whose forms have been changed through a geological process such …