Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment/Definitions

Main pageTemplatesArticle assessmentCollaborationMembersDefinitionsPopular pagesTalk page

Definitions

The following are terms related to the environment and environmentalism that are sometimes used incorrectly. Editors are encouraged to use these terms correctly.

• Conservation: environmental protection, especially as related to appropriate or reduced use of natural resources.
• Conservationist: an individual who believes in or practices conservation.
• Conservation biology: a scientific discipline that deals with human effects on species, communities, or ecosystems, or deals with their protection.
• Conservation biologist: a scientist working in the field of conservation biology.
• Environmentalist: an individual who believes in or practices any form of environmental protection.
• Environmentalism: the movement concerned with protecting the natural environment from human-caused harm.
• Environmental science: a multidisciplinary scientific discipline that draws on biology, chemistry, and geology, among other sciences, to study the relationships between human beings and the natural environment.
• Environmental scientist: a scientist working in the field of environmental science.
• Environmental social science: the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment.
• Ecology: scientific discipline that deals with the interrelationships of organisms and/or their abiotic environment.
• Ecologist: a scientist working in the field of ecology.
• Preservationist: an individual who believes in, or works to, protect functional, largely pristine, ecosystems from human impacts.

Structure

• Environment as in natural environment, wildlife, ecological succession
• Environmental issues as in pollution, global warming, waste, Exxon Valdez

More information

— Note that the conservation of species or habitats as defined in the science of ecology is considered by this project as a subset of environmental topics.

A topic that is generally, but not divisively omitted from this project:

• Ecology – the study of species and ecosystems in natural environments— Refer to WikiProject Ecology.