Environment & Nature — C1 English Vocabulary
This C1 vocabulary list gathers 60 advanced English words about environment & nature — ecosystems, climate and conservation. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using environment & nature words in English
Ecological vocabulary is systematic in a way that rewards learning the pieces rather than the words. The -vore suffix, from the Latin for devour, generates herbivore, carnivore and omnivore and several more besides. The page also covers prey, which is uncountable and surprises people, and separates ecology from environment, which are not synonyms.
What to watch out for
Prey is uncountable; predator is not
Say the wolf hunts its prey and plenty of prey in the valley — no plural and no article in the general sense. Predator is an ordinary countable noun. An apex predator sits at the top of a food chain with no natural predators of its own. The verb prey on is fixed and extends figuratively: preying on the vulnerable.
The -vore and bio- elements are productive
-vore comes from Latin vorare, to devour, giving herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, insectivore and frugivore, with adjectives in -vorous: carnivorous. The Greek bio- gives biome, biosphere, biodiversity and biomass. Recognising these two elements makes most of this page decodable without a dictionary.
Ecology is not a synonym for environment
Ecology is the scientific study of relationships between organisms and their surroundings, and by extension the system of those relationships: the ecology of the reef. The environment is the surroundings themselves. Saying a factory damaged the ecology is possible but means the web of relations, not simply the place. Sequestration here means the long-term capture and storage of carbon.
Words learners mix up
Ecology is a field where near-synonyms describe genuinely different interventions and different landscapes. These clusters cover putting trees back, the parts of a river system, and whether a species belongs where it is.
Putting land back: four different projects
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| reforestation | Replanting trees where forest recently stood. Restores something that was lost. | Reforestation of the cleared hillsides. |
| afforestation | Planting trees where there was no forest before. A different intervention, and it can damage existing grassland habitat. | Afforestation of upland moor is contested. |
| rewilding | Letting an ecosystem restore itself, often by reintroducing missing species. The aim is a process, not a planting target. | A rewilding project that brought back beavers. |
| regenerative | An adjective for practices that improve the land while using it — most often of farming. | Regenerative agriculture rebuilt the topsoil. |
The one-letter difference between reforestation and afforestation carries a whole policy argument: planting trees on land that was never forest can reduce biodiversity rather than restore it, which is why environmental writing keeps the two apart carefully.
How water moves through a landscape
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| catchment | The whole area of land whose rainfall drains into one river or reservoir. The largest unit here. | Pollution anywhere in the catchment reaches the reservoir. |
| tributary | A smaller river flowing into a larger one. Countable, and always defined by what it joins. | The Cam is a tributary of the Great Ouse. |
| estuary | The tidal mouth where a river meets the sea, and fresh water mixes with salt. | Wading birds feed on the estuary mudflats. |
| runoff | Water flowing over land into rivers, carrying whatever it picks up. One word, uncountable. | Agricultural runoff caused the algal bloom. |
| silt | The fine sediment that water carries and deposits. Uncountable, and both noun and verb: the channel silted up. | Centuries of silt had closed the harbour. |
Catchment is the word doing the most work in environmental policy, because it defines the area over which pollution has to be managed. In American English the same idea is a watershed, which in British English usually means a turning point instead.
Does the species belong here?
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| endemic | Found naturally in one place and nowhere else. A statement about restricted range. | The lemur is endemic to Madagascar. |
| invasive | Introduced from elsewhere and spreading at the expense of native species. A judgement about harm. | An invasive weed choking the waterways. |
| migratory | Moving seasonally between regions as a normal part of its life cycle. Belongs in both places. | Migratory geese arrive in October. |
| imperilled | At serious risk of extinction. British English doubles the l. | Several imperilled amphibians were recorded. |
Endemic is the false friend here. In ecology it means native and restricted to one place; in public health it means a disease constantly present in a population. The two senses are unrelated, and only the surrounding words tell you which is meant.
Collocations that sound natural
Ecological writing pairs its nouns tightly, and several of these phrases have become the standard terms of climate policy rather than free descriptions.
carbon sink
act as a carbon sinka major carbon sinkthe ocean carbon sink
Anything absorbing more carbon than it releases. The verb is act as or serve as.
sequestration
carbon sequestrationsequester carbonlong-term sequestration
The verb is sequester. Note the unrelated legal sense of seizing property, and the American budgetary one.
symbiosis
live in symbiosisa symbiotic relationshipsymbiosis between
Uncountable; the adjective symbiotic is far commoner. Strictly it covers any close biological partnership, not only mutually beneficial ones.
poaching
illegal poachinganti-poaching patrolspoaching of elephants
Uncountable. Unrelated to the cooking sense, and to the business sense of recruiting a rival’s staff.
desertification
halt desertificationthe spread of desertificationdesertification of the Sahel
Uncountable, and it names fertile land becoming desert through drought or mismanagement.
arid / fertile / temperate
arid landfertile soila temperate climatesemi-arid regions
The three standard land-and-climate adjectives. Temperate means moderate, not merely mild — it names a climate zone.
Formal, neutral or informal?
Nature writing mixes Latin technical vocabulary with words that vary between British and American English, and a few whose everyday sense has drifted from the scientific one.
- flora and faunaLatin · pluralPlant life and animal life of a region. Both are collective and take plural verbs in careful use: the fauna are well documented. They occur together so often that the phrase is nearly fixed.
- savannahSpelling variesBritish English generally writes savannah, American English savanna. Both are accepted; keep one within a document.
- smokestackAmericanA tall industrial chimney. British English says chimney or flue, though smokestack industries is a fixed phrase for heavy manufacturing everywhere.
- imperilledBritish spelling · formalDoubles the l, as British English does in travelled and labelled. More literary than endangered, which is the technical conservation category.
- fertiliser / pesticideBritish -iseFertiliser takes the British -ise, and so do decarbonise and biodegrade’s relatives. Pesticide is the umbrella term; herbicide and insecticide are its specific kinds.
- wildernessUncountable · value-ladenLand unaltered by human activity. Uncountable, and it carries a value judgement — areas called wilderness have often been inhabited and managed by indigenous peoples for millennia.
- conservancy / conservationistInstitutionalA conservancy is an organisation or a protected area managed for conservation; a conservationist is a person who works to protect nature. Neither is a synonym for environmentalist, which implies campaigning.
- particulateTechnicalMicroscopic solid particles suspended in air, usually plural — particulates — or in the fixed measure particulate matter. A precise air-quality term, not a general word for dust.
Sentences to try
Four frames from ecological writing. Note the uncountable noun in the first.
- The population declined as prey became scarce.
- Wolves function as an apex predator in this biome.
- Peatland is one of the most effective carbon sinks we have.
- Thawing permafrost releases stored methane.
Questions about environment & nature vocabulary
Is "prey" countable?
No — prey is uncountable in its usual sense and takes no article and no plural: The owl returned with its prey, there is little prey at this altitude. Its counterpart predator is fully countable: three predators. The verb form is the fixed phrasal prey on, which works literally in biology and figuratively of exploitation: companies that prey on inexperienced borrowers. Do not confuse it in writing with pray, which is a homophone and an entirely different word.
What does the "-vore" ending mean?
It comes from the Latin verb vorare, meaning to devour, and it forms nouns naming what an organism eats: a herbivore eats plants, a carnivore eats meat, an omnivore eats both, an insectivore eats insects and a frugivore eats fruit. The corresponding adjectives end in -vorous: herbivorous, carnivorous. The same root gives the ordinary English verb devour and the adjective voracious, meaning having a huge appetite, which is now used far more often about reading than about food.
What is the difference between ecology and environment?
The environment is the physical surroundings in which organisms live — air, water, soil, climate. Ecology is the scientific study of how organisms interact with each other and with those surroundings, and by extension the system of relationships itself: the ecology of a coral reef. So pollution damages the environment, while introducing an invasive species disrupts the ecology. Using ecology as a smarter-sounding synonym for environment is common in journalism and imprecise in scientific writing.