Introduction to Natural Environment

At the end of this course, students should be able to: 1. know the concept and components of natural environment; 2. examine factors affecting natural environment; and 3. know the issues and challenges of natural environment.

The course identifies what constitutes the natural environment, which can be aggregated into land (and all that is on it: landform, vegetation, soil and animals), water (and what resides in it: fish, organisms as well as related issues such as saline and fresh water) the atmosphere and climate (strata, composition, circulation). It examines the distributions of these constituents all over the world and the factors influencing growth and/or development and their global distribution as well as the changes in them brought about by human activities. 200 level