With the advent of time, the fast progress in the communication technologies and evolvement of Internet of Things (IoT), the modern world is able to invisibly intertwine with sensors and different computational devices while sustaining constant network connectivity. The constant connected modern world with computational devices and actuators develop a smart environment. Smart environmental monitoring is a systematic sampling that helps to understand the natural environment such as air, water, biota, and land. In general form, environmental monitoring is the application of IoT. It normally uses the sensor to help in the protection of environment via parameters for monitoring such as quality of air, quality of water etc, and it can include area like monitoring the condition of wildlife. This paper explores IoT architecture in the smart environment as well as a comparison between technologies used in environmental monitoring. It basically emphasizes on various issues and challenges involved in smart environment monitoring. A layered framework of the smart environment is also presented. It is an informative paper for the researchers that suggest effective research in this domain.