What is environmental capacity?

Environmental systems all possess a certain capacity for self-purification. For example, when a river with high flow rates is subjected to an amount of pollutants, due to the action of various physical, chemical, and biological factors present in the river, the concentration of those pollutants can be reduced rapidly, keeping it below environmental standards. This is the process of self-purification by the environment (the river), whereby pollutants are diluted or transformed into substances that are not polluting. The stronger the self-purification capacity of the environment, the greater its environmental capacity. Environmental capacity refers to the maximum amount of pollutants that an environment can tolerate; within this limit, the quality of the environment does not decline to a level that is harmful to human life or the survival of plants and animals, and the environment has the ability to repair itself from damage caused by external pollutants.

One of the key tasks for the Environmental Protection Agency at present is to reduce the total volume

Most environmental systems possess a certain capacity for self-purification. For example, when a river with a high flow rate is subjected to an amount of pollutants, the concentration of these pollutants in the river can decrease rapidly due to various physical, chemical, and biological factors, remaining below environmental standards. This is the process of self-purification by the environment (the river), whereby pollutants are diluted or converted into substances that are not polluting. The stronger the environment’s self-purification ability, the greater its environmental capacity. The size of the environmental capacity of a particular environment depends on the conditions of that environment itself; for instance, rivers with higher flow rates have a greater environmental capacity than those with lower flow rates. Different pollutants also result in varying degrees of purification by the environment.