Earth’s Resources

What are natural resources?

Natural Resources - resources that the Earth provides

What are examples of natural resources?

Air, water, land, living things, nutrients, rocks, minerals

Some natural resources are cycled through the environment

Carbon cycle, water cycle

Earth’s Resources

What are renewable resources?

Renewable Resources - natural resource that can be used indefinitely without causing a reduction in the available supply

What are examples of renewable resources?

Fresh air, fresh surface water (lakes, rivers, streams, groundwater), fertile soil, elements that cycle through Earth’s systems (nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus), living things, solar energy

Earth’s Resources

Renewable Resources

Living Things - Why are these considered “renewable?”

Plants and animals reproduce (even if raised for food, they can be replaced in short periods of time)

What about trees that are cut down for paper?

They are replanted and ready for harvest again in 10-20 years

Timber?

About 60 years

Earth’s Resources

Renewable Resources

Sustainable Yield - The replacement of renewable resources at the same rate at which they are consumed

How can we positively affect sustainable yield on a forest of trees?

How can we negatively affect sustainable yield?

Earth’s Resources

What are nonrenewable resources?

Nonrenewable resources - a resource that exists in a fixed amount in various places in Earth’s crust and can be replaced only be geological, physical, and chemical processes that takes hundreds of millions of years

What are examples of nonrenewable resources?

Diamonds, fossil fuels, gemstones, gold, copper, silver

Earth’s Resources

Nonrenewable Resources

Why are resources nonrenewable?

Nonrenewable resources are exhaustible because they are being extracted and used at a much faster rate than the rate at which they are formed