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Natural systems characterized by specific combinations of physical, chemical, and biological properties and interactions and reflecting impacts of human activities to varying extents(Warren 2001). In urban environments, human activities dominate over but usually, to some extent still reflect, the surrounding natural environment.
Environments are terrestrial or aquatic or reflect the interfaces between these types. Some are extensively modified by human activity (urban, suburban, or agricultural and mining land uses) but others are not.
Terrestrial environments (about 28% of the Earth’s surface) are defined by a combination of:
Temperature – polar, temperate, subtropical, or tropical;
Humidity – arid, semi-arid or humid
Geomorphology (e.g., mountains, foothills, plateaux, plains, and lowlands).
These influence the distribution of ecosystemswhich...
References
Bell, F G (2004) Engineering geology and construction CRC Press (Boca Raton, Florida) 808pp
Chapin III, FS; Matson, PA and Vitousek, PM (2012) Principles of terrestrial ecosystem ecology, 2nd Edn. Springer Verlag (Heidelberg) 548pp ISBN 0-387-95439-2
de Mulder, EDF; McCall, GH and Marker, BR 1996 (Eds) Urban geoscience. AGID Special, Publication 20. AA Balkema (Amsterdam) 280pp
Duursma, EK (Ed.) (2002) Encyclopedia of marine sciences, 2nd Edn. Springer (Heidelberg) 368pp
Gupta A (2011) Tropical geomorphology. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge) 400pp
Warren A (2001) Habitat conservation: managing the physical enviroment J Wiley (Hoboken, New Jersey) 368pp
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Marker, B.R. (2018). Environments. In: Bobrowsky, P., Marker, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12127-7_112-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12127-7_112-1
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