Evaluate the extent to which the environment and/or knowledge of the environment affected
imperial expansion in the period circa 1450-1750.

Knowledge of the environment stimulated the quest to colonize regions that could provide many natural resources capable of stimulating the empire's economy.

Explanation:

The imperial expansion between 1450 and 1750, refers to the political, economic and social process, which allowed European nations to take over other nations with the intent of promoting the European empire in the economic and even cultural spheres. In that case, European nations exploited the resources that the nations dominated by them could provide.

The knowledge of the environment, allowed the imperial expansion to search for nations in regions that could provide a vast amount of natural resources that would supply the European nation and that would allow a profitable trade between countries.

i'd assume india mainly because of how isolated japan was.   plus it is a whole china away.

genetics is the study of how dna works, the methodologies defining the new recent technologies allow scientist to have a panoramic view of the entire dna landscape, especially how genomes interact with their environment, including off course, factors outside their organisms.

thus is very possible the existence of both scenarios, where populations of isolated individuals have different genetic traits, and share traits related to genetic mutation, due rats can easily travel overseas using human transport channels. so scientists could get a vast number of data, including human interaction, evolution of rodents, health development, spread of infections, development of new organisms, how genomes evolve in different environments and so on.