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Environmental Engineering as a Profession

Environmental engineering has a proud history and a bright future. It
is a career that may be challenging, enjoyable, personally satisfying, and
monetarily rewarding. Environmental engineers are committed to high
standards of interpersonal and environmental ethics. They try to be part
of the solution while recognizing that all people including themselves are
part of the problem.
Every state and most local governments have agencies dealing with
air quality, water quality and water resource management, soil quality,
forest and natural resource management, and agricultural management
that employ environmental engineers. Pollution control engineering has
also become an exceedingly profitable venture.

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PUBLIC AWARENESS A hazard is a threat to life, health, property, or ecosystems,

Environmental Pollution or problems cannot be solved by mere laws. i.e., it involves something that could potentially be harmful.
Public participation is an important aspect which serves the environmental Therefore, when a dormant hazard comes to fruition, it will
Protection. cause physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic
RISK AND HAZARDS IN THE ENVIRONMENT change to the environment, and result in an incident, accident,
Environmental risk due to various environmental hazards is an emergency event, or disaster.
important topic for environmental engineers to recognize and understand Hazards may be classified into:
in order to protect human society and ecosystems from harms or
Chemical hazards – Combustion of Fossil fuels, industrial effluence,
damages at local, regional or global scales. For example, to deal with
pesticides heavy metals.
contaminated soil and ground water at a brown field, risk and exposure Physical hazards – Radioactive and UV radiations, Global warming,
assessment help engineers choose an optimal solution to either treat the Chlorofluro carbons, Noise etc.
hazard (e.g., to remove the contaminants from the soil and water) or Biological hazards – Bacteria, Viruses, Parasites.
reduce the exposure (e.g., to cover up the land with a barrier).

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ECOSYSTEM ECOSYSTEM
is defined as a natural functional ecological unit An ecosystem is divided into two parts: Biotic- included
comprising of living organisms and their non-living the living beings of the ecosystem and Abiotic- include the
environment that interact to form a stable self-supporting non-living physical beings
system. A community or group of living organisms that live in
and interact with each in a specific environment. For The most common abiotic factors are water, soil, sunlight,
instance, tropical forest are ecosystems made up of living minerals, and other things. Two aspects hold the biotic and
beings such a trees, plants, animals, insects and micro- abiotic factors together.
organisms that are in constant interaction between
themselves and that are affected by other physical (sun, • The cycling of various nutrients in the ecosystem
temperature) or chemical (oxygen or nutrients) components. • The flow of energy through the ecosystem

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ECOLOGY ECOLOGY
-branch of biology that deals with the relations of Every plant and animal present in the ecology relies on
organisms to one another and to their physical environment. the numerous aspects of the environment, in order to get
nutrients, water, and food.
-it is the study of the distribution and abundance of
organisms, the flows of energy and materials between Another thing that is studied in the field of ecology is how
abiotic and biotic components of ecosystem. the organisms respond to the atmosphere, topography, soil,
and climate and water availability.

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ECOLOGY ECOSYSTEM vs ECOLOGY

Additionally, the following things are studied in extensive Ecology and Ecosystem differ in the following ways:
detail when it comes to ecology.
Ecology Ecosystem
• Biodiversity within the ecosystem - revolves around the - revolves around the study
• Abundance and distribution of organisms present in the relationship between of different places and
environment and living environments, such as
environment organisms and their streams, still water, desert,
• Progress changes and modifications in the ecosystem interactions and relationship
with the environment.
river, grassland, forest, etc.

• The effects of the environmental factors on organisms -- is the study of the - can be of different types
present in a population environment and different such as sea ecosystem,
ecosystems. forest ecosystem and pond
• Adaptations, interactions and life processes of any specific ecosystem.
species

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Structure of Ecosystem
ECOSYSTEM vs ECOLOGY
1. Abiotic or non-living components or physical components
Ecology and Ecosystem differ in the following ways:
2. Biotic or Living components
Ecology Ecosystem 3. Energy components
-there are no general - considered the subset of Function of organisms in an ecosystem
classifications when it ecology and it revolves
comes to the ecology around all the complex 1. Producer (autotrophy): make food; plants, algae
interactions between living 2. Consumer (heterotrophy): eat other organisms
beings and non-living 3. Decomposer: eat dead organic matter; bacteria and fungi
beings in a community or
area. Classes of Consumers
- is a broader perspective of - consists of every biotic and 1. Herbivore – primary consumer – eats plants
the environment. abiotic factor of the 2. Carnivores – secondary – meat eaters; eat herbivores
environment
3. Tertiary – feed on carnivores
4. Omnivores – eat plants/animals

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ENERGY FLOW IN ECOSYSTEM

ENERGY FLOW IN ECOSYSTEM
• All organisms must obtain a supply of energy and nutrients from
• The energy contained within producers and consumers is ultimately
their environment in order to survive.
passed to the decomposers that are responsible for the constant
• The transformations of energy in an ecosystem begin first with the
recycling of nutrients.
input of energy from the sun.
• Thus, there is a one-way flow of energy through the biotic
• Because, it is the first step in the production of energy for living
community and a cycling of nutrients between the biotic and abiotic
things, it is called “Primary production”.
components of the ecosystem.
• Photosynthesis -- Chemical reaction where green plants use water
& carbon dioxide to store the sun’s energy in glucose. • Energy flow cannot occur in reverse direction.
• ENERGY is stored in glucose. • Starts from autotrophs (the producer level, i.e., first trophic level) to
• Glucose is stored as starch in plants Heterotrophs including plant eaters or Herbivores (second trophic
• The majority of autotrophs are photoautotrophs that harness the level) and so on.
energy of the sun and pass some of this energy onto consumers
through feeding pathways.

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ENERGY FLOW IN ECOSYSTEM

• The amount of energy decreases with successive trophic levels.
• Only About 1% of energy from the sun is used by green plants &
rest remains unutilized.
• Similarly, there is loss of energy in each trophic level.
• The transfer of food energy between the organisms in an ecosystem
can be tracked by constructing food chains, food webs, pyramids of
numbers, biomass and energy and energy flow diagrams.

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FOOD CHAIN
Plants by photosynthesis convert solar energy into protoplasm.
Small herbivores consume the vegetable matter and convert into
animal matter which in turn eaten by large carnivores.
• A food chain may be defined as, “the transfer of energy and
nutrients through a series of organisms with repeated process of
eating and being eaten”.
• In an ecosystem, all the organisms are linked together with one
another by food relationship.
• Each organism living or dead is potential food for some other
organism.

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FOOD WEB
The food relationship between various organisms is being depicted by
linking all the possible prey and predators of different food level. In an
ecosystem linking of feeding habit relations will provide a food web or
Interlocking pattern of several interlinked food chains is termed as FOOD
WEB.

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ECOLOGICAL PYRAMIDS
An ”Ecological pyramid” is a graphical representation that shows the
relative amounts of energy or matter contained within each tropic level
in a food chain or food web. An ecological pyramid shows the
relationship between consumers and producers at different tropic
levels in an ecosystem.

This pyramid shows the relative amount of energy available at each trophic
level. Organisms use about 10% of this energy for life processes and the rest
is lost as heat. It starts with the producers at the base, which have 100%
energy, then goes up to the first level consumers, or the organism that eat
producers. Next it goes up to the second level consumers which get 10% of
the energy from the first level producers, which is 1% of the energy from the
original producer’s energy. This continues on to the top of the pyramid.

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TYPES OF ECOLOGICAL PYRAMIDS TYPES OF ECOLOGICAL PYRAMIDS

Pyramid of Numbers Pyramid of Biomass
Shows the relative number of individual organisms at each tropic A pyramid of biomass represents the total dry mass (in grams per
level. square meter of area) of all the organisms in each tropic level at a
particular time.

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TYPES OF ECOLOGICAL PYRAMIDS

Pyramid of Energy
A pyramid of biomass represents the rate of energy flow and/or
productivity at successive tropic levels. The pyramids of energy are
always upright.

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