DEFINITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

Definition of environmental pollution is the inclusion of the organism, energy substances, and or other components into the environment or change the order of the environment by human activities or natural processes so that environmental quality decreases to a certain level cause the environment to be less or cease to function as intended. Pollution may arise as a result of human activities or due to natural (eg volcanic eruption, toxic gases).

Environmental science usually discuss pollution caused by human activities, which can be prevented and controlled. Due to human activities, environmental pollution  inevitable. Environmental pollution can not be avoided. What you can do is to reduce pollution, pollution control, and increasing public awareness and concern for the environment so as not to contaminate lingkngan. Substances or materials that could cause pollution called pollutants. The terms of a substance called a pollutant if its existence could cause harm to a living creature. For example, the carbon dioxide content of 0.033% in air beneficial for the plant, but if it is higher than 0.033% can give damaging effects.
A substance can be called a pollutant if:

1. Excess of the normal.
2. Being on time is not right.
3. Being in the wrong place.

The characteristic of pollutants are:

1. Damaging for a while, but when it reacts with another substance does not damage the environment.
2. Damaging in a long time. For example, Pb does not damage when low concentrations. However, in the long term, Pb can accumulate in the body to damaging levels.

Pollution on the environment, it can be divided into

• air pollution ,
• water pollution, and
• soil pollution.

THE BENEFITS OF AN ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACH

These landscape and stand level examples, illustrating the functions of some important forest composition and structures, indicate why practices such as clearcutting and elimination of old growth forests are not consistent with maintaining fully functioning forests. If the degradation caused by clearcutting and removal of old growth forests were more evident, people might be more willing to adopt ecologically responsible approaches to timber management.

However, because forests operate on such long timeframes, and because, for millennia, forests have been building biological legacies through many generations of trees that have lived and died, human activities that remove composition and structures do not immediately appear to be as damaging as they actually are. However, as timber managers continue to degrade composition and structures of forests, from landscape to stand levels, damage to forest functioning becomes cumulative. Eventually this approach leads to degraded ecosystems, which provide few ecological functions, compared to the fully functioning forests they replaced. Because forest degradation occurs relatively slowly, successive generations of human beings inherit degraded forests which they assume to be natural, “healthy” ecosystems. In other words, we don’t live long enough to see the results of our mistakes.

An ecosystem-based approach attempts to avoid loss of forest functioning by maintaining forest composition and structures from the smallest soil bacteria to the landscape patterns of a large forest watershed. We may not understand the functions of particular forest composition and structures; nevertheless, an ecologically responsible approach protects all composition and structures. When parts of the forest are altered during activities such as ecologically responsible timber management or tourism, provisions for the replacement of forest composition and structures are built into ecologically responsible plans and activities.

As well as providing for the protection and maintenance of forest functioning, an ecosystem-based approach fosters the development of diverse, sustainable human economies. Because an ecosystem-based approach creates the least modification to forest ecosystem composition and structures, it provides for the largest diversity of compatible forest uses. In other words, by maintaining trees on the sites where we practice timber management and by ensuring that ecologically viable old growth stands are found in each landscape, we provide an environment where the broadest spectrum of uses, from adventure tourism to timber extraction, can coexist. Such a range of activities is not possible where conventional timber management systems, such as clearcuts and tree plantations, are employed.

From a timber standpoint, because ecologically responsible timber management produces steady supplies of mature wood, the long-term economic benefits exceed those of conventional timber management practices. Mature wood—long-fibred and strong—is superior for many uses, from structural materials and pulp to furniture and fine cabinets. In comparison, short-fibred, juvenile wood is not as strong and will warp and twist easily. Mature wood is produced when the cambium layer (the single layer of cells between the wood and the bark) divides around dead branches or no branches. Obviously, increasing amounts of mature wood are produced as a tree gets larger and older.

DEFINITION AND UNDERSTANDING OF ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT

Definition and Understanding of  Ecosystem Management is a confusing mixture of good forest ecology principles and integrated or multiple use forest management. Advocates of ecosystem management analyze and describe ecosystem functioning in ways that recognize the need to maintain natural composition and structures of forest ecosystems from the landscape level to the stand or patch level.

However, while providing good information about forest functioning, practitioners of ecosystem management also continue to advocate methods and levels of timber extraction that degrade forest ecosystem composition, structures, and functioning necessary to maintain fully functioning forests through time. Conventional clearcutting and tree plantations are regular components of ecosystem management.

In contrast, ecologically responsible timber management is ecosystem-based, which means that the character (i.e. composition, structure, and functioning) and condition of ecosystems determine what types of human use can be carried out and in what ways and at what level of intensity these uses can occur while ensuring the maintenance of fully functioning forests at all scales through time.

Conventional timber management approaches described above all utilize concepts oriented to exploiting natural forests for timber and to producing crops of trees in short time cycles. Most of these concepts have little or no application in ecologically responsible timber management, because conventional approaches are focused on timber, while ecosystembased, ecologically responsible approaches are focused on forests.