earth’s resources what are natural resources? natural resources - resources that the earth...
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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
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