====== Understanding the Definition of Environment ======
By [[yiler-huang| Yiler Huang]]

[[yiler-huang-environment#了解環境的定義|中文版]]

Environment means everything that affects human and nature, including sunlight, air, water, dirt, ground, mines, forests, animals, economy, culture and history. A natural environment including individuals, and many similar individuals called populations. It called communities when there was a loss of population. It was called an ecosystem when there were lots of communities, and a biome including lots of ecosystems. And a  biosphere was built with lots of biomes. A biosphere needs some place you can stand, like ground. And you will need air, water and food to keep you alive. You also need sunlight to grow your foods, and some things that break down crops to the nutrients of your food.

People loved to change the environment to make it more comfortable, like we build cities, we farm animals and plants to eat. And if we change the environment, there might be something left. So we called them history. How humans change the world affected the environment, like some animals died because of us, or we built something on mountains.

However, there was one thing we don’t often think about. Like what’s below the city, and where our food comes from. We don’t think about that cause most of us don’t know a lot about the environment. If we want to know more about the environment, we have to go out and see the environment and to learn more about it. And think more about how something happened and why.

Some people were curious about “what the environment looked like in the past”, like Taipei city. In the old time in Taipei city, there were even lakes here, and people farm something on the ground. That’s the image that we couldn’t see.

When we talk about something, we like to say whether it's good or bad. But, it’s very hard to decide if an environment is good or bad. Like what is the reason why a pool or lake is “good” or it’s bad, it’s hard. So people wrote a law about it. Like if there were any pollution thing, creature or energy in a lake. That means the lake is bad, so we can quickly check an environment is good or not.

===== 了解環境的定義 =====

環境是指影響人類和自然的任何東西，包括陽光、空氣、水、泥土、地面、礦山、森林、動物、經濟、文化和歷史。一個自然環境包括個體，許多類似的個體稱為種群。當很多種群聚集再一起就是一個生物群。當有很多生物群和一個包含很多生態系統的生物群落時，它被稱為生態系統。一個生物圈由許多生物群落組成。生物圈需要一個你可以站立的地方，比如地面。然後你需要空氣、水和食物來維持生命。你還需要陽光來種植食物，以及將作物分解為食物營養的一些生物。

人們喜歡改變環境以讓它變得更舒適，就像我們建造城市，我們飼養動物和植物以供食用。如果我們改變環境，可能會留下一些東西。所以我們稱它們為歷史。人類如何改變世界影響了環境，就像一些動物因我們而死亡，或者我們在原本沒有東西的地方建造了一些東西。

然而，有一件事我們並不經常考慮。像是城市底下的東西，以及我們的食物來自哪裡。我們沒有考慮到這一點，因為我們大多數人對環境知之甚少。如果我們想更多地了解環境，就必須走出去，看看環境，了解更多。並更多地思考事情是如何發生的以及為什麼發生。

有些人好奇“過去的環境是什麼樣子”，比如台北市。昔日的台北市，這裡甚至還有湖泊，和人們種植的田地。那是我們現在看不到的東西。

當我們討論事情時，我們常常討論到哪件事是好是壞。但是，很難判斷一個環境是好是壞。就像游泳池或湖泊「好」或「壞」的原因是什麼一樣。所以人們為此制定了法律。就像湖裡有任何污染的東西、生物或能量，代表著湖泊是壞的，藉此我們可以快速檢查環境是否良好。最後，如果我們要減少對環境的污染，我們必須更深入的了解這個環境，再判斷環境的需求，並加以改進。

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