UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 22 of 150

Correct — B, Anthropogenic environment. The word comes from the Greek anthropos ('human being') plus the suffix -genic ('produced by'), so an anthropogenic environment is by definition one created or altered by human action — cropland carved out of forest, a reservoir behind a dam, a canal network, a plantation, a mine, a road corridor or a city. Geographers use the term as the general category standing opposite the natural (physical) environment, which is the term for surroundings as they exist without human modification. The stem gives the agency of change ('modified by human activities'), and only option (b) names that agency.

• (a)Natural environment — Wrong — the natural or physical environment is the sum of land, water, air and living things as they occur independently of human intervention. It is the exact opposite of what the stem describes.
• (c)Urban environment — Tempting but wrong — a city is certainly human-made, but 'urban environment' names only one type of human-modified setting. Irrigated farmland, reservoirs, canals, plantations and mines are equally products of human activity and are not urban, so the term is far too narrow to be the general answer.
• (d)Modern environment — Wrong — 'modern environment' is not a recognised category in environmental geography. It would point to a period of time, not to the agency (human action) that did the modifying.

Environmental geography classifies surroundings by the agency that shaped them. The natural (physical) environment covers the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere as they occur without human intervention. The anthropogenic environment — also called the human-made, cultural or built environment — is that same setting after people have reshaped it: fields, canals, reservoirs, plantations, mines, settlements and cities. In practice the two form a continuum rather than a pair of boxes, because almost no part of the Earth's surface today is entirely free of human influence. The same prefix is used widely: anthropogenic emissions (human-caused greenhouse gases), anthropogenic landforms, and the much-discussed (though not formally ratified) 'Anthropocene'.

All four options name some kind of setting, but only one names the cause of the change. Read the operative words in the stem — 'modified by human activities' — and then test each option: does it identify who or what did the modifying? 'Urban' identifies a place-type, 'modern' identifies a period, 'natural' identifies the absence of human action. Only 'anthropogenic' encodes the human agency itself, and the prefix anthropo- = human makes it recognisable even if the term is unfamiliar.

• 'Anthropogenic' = Greek anthropos (human) + -genic (produced by); anything caused or made by human beings.
• Natural (physical) environment = surroundings unmodified by humans; anthropogenic environment = the same surroundings after human alteration.
• Other names for the same idea: human-made environment, cultural environment, built environment.
• The urban environment is only one sub-type of the anthropogenic environment — farmland, reservoirs and plantations are anthropogenic too.
• The prefix recurs in 'anthropogenic emissions' (human-caused greenhouse gases) and in the proposed 'Anthropocene' epoch.

• Picking 'urban environment' — true of cities but far too narrow; not all human modification is urban.
• Treating 'natural' and 'anthropogenic' as watertight opposites — most real landscapes today are a mixture of both.
• Reading 'modern' as if it were a technical classification; it is not.

This area comes either as a one-line definition ('the environment modified by human activities is called…') or through the determinism–possibilism debate; UPSC more often tests the same idea indirectly through 'anthropogenic' pollutants, emissions and landforms.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The term 'anthropogenic' in environmental studies refers to something that is:

  • (a)caused by human activity
  • (b)of volcanic origin
  • (c)found only in desert regions
  • (d)produced by micro-organisms

  Answer(a) caused by human activity — from the Greek anthropos, meaning 'human being'.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is NOT an example of an anthropogenic environment?

  • (a)A canal-irrigated agricultural plain
  • (b)A reservoir impounded behind a dam
  • (c)An undisturbed tropical rainforest
  • (d)An open-cast coal-mining landscape

  Answer(c) An undisturbed tropical rainforest — it is a natural environment, whereas the other three were created or reshaped by human activity.