What Is Environmental Science?

Observable: Attributes that can be seen, measured, or noticed by senses.
Testable: Questions or hypotheses that can be investigated scientifically to verify truth.
Reliable: Results that remain consistent when experiments are repeated.
Flexible: Ideas and conclusions that are open to change when new evidence is presented.
Non-testable Topics: Questions involving subjective preferences (e.g., "are rocks the most pretty thing?") that cannot be measured using a scientific process.

Components of Scientific Inquiry:
- Question: Identifying the specific issue or phenomenon to investigate.
- Research: Gathering existing background information on the topic.
- Hypothesis: Formulating a testable prediction.
- Data Collection: Executing tests while accounting for independent, dependent, and controlled variables.
- Analysis: Evaluating collected data to find trends or patterns.
- Conclusion: Deciding whether experimental evidence supports or refutes the hypothesis.
Common Errors in Science:
1. No Control: Omitting a benchmark or control group for baseline comparison.
2. No Repeats: Performing an experiment only once, which prevents verifying reliability.
3. Bias: Allowing personal opinions, expectations, or non-scientific motives to skew results.

Categorization of Environmental Factors:
- Biotic Factors: Living organisms and their interactions (e.g., birds collecting nectar from water lilies, a raccoon eating berries from a bush, frogs eating insects).
- Abiotic Factors: Non-living physical components (e.g., sunlight, soil, pond water).
Ecological Levels:
- Biosphere: All living things and the areas in which they live; too large to be researched directly as a single system.
- Biome: Large geographical area classified by climate along with plant and animal life.
- Ecosystem: All living things functioning together alongside physical factors; does not have a set size.
- Community: Area occupied by different groups of interacting organisms, where physical factors are ignored.
- Population: Individuals of a species (organisms that can reproduce) living in the same geographical area.
- Habitat: The place where an organism lives; destruction of habitat by human activity can lead to extinction.

Sustainability Goal: Meeting present environmental and resource needs without compromising future ecological health.
Sustainable Practice: Conservation actions (such as deploying artificial reefs) designed to preserve aquatic habitats and sustain natural ecosystems over time.