To create an environment within the default location of ~/.conda/envs, you will need to use following command to begin the environment creation process.

conda create -n my_env

This will create an empty environment that you can activate and install additional packages into.

You can also create environments with a list of packages with something like this. 

conda create -n my_env pandas

For additional information please refer to the conda documentation related to maintaining environments.

This environment can be activated by typing 

conda activate my_env

Please refer to the documentation for more details on using these environments: Switching Environments: Jupyter Notebook/Lab & Switching Environments: conda