Green Olympiad 2014 Study Material

Green Olympiad 2014 Study Material
What are Natural Resources?

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This is an Excerpt from our Green Olympiad 2014 Study Material
Theme Our Natural Resources

What is a Resource?
A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced.
Typically, resources are materials or other assets that are
transformed to produce benefit and in the process may be
consumed or made unavailable.

From a human perspective a natural resource is anything
obtained from the environment to satisfy human needs and
wants. From a broader biological or ecological perspective a
resource satisfies the needs of a living organism.

Resources have three main characteristics:




1. Utility
2. Limited Availability
3. Potential for depletion or consumption.

Resources have been variously categorized as biotic versus abiotic,
renewable versus non-renewable and potential versus actual, along
with more elaborate classifications.


Our environment provides us with a variety of goods and
services necessary for our day-to-day lives. These natural
resources include, air, water, soil and minerals, along with the
climate and solar energy, which form the non-living or abiotic
part of nature.

The biotic or living parts of nature consist of plants and
animals, including microbes.




Plants and animals can only survive as communities of different
organisms, all closely linked to each in their own habitat, and
requiring specific abiotic conditions.

Thus, forests, grasslands, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes and
the marine environment all form habitats for specialized
communities of plants and animals to live in.

The interactions between the abiotic aspects of nature and
specific living organisms together form ecosystems of various
types.

Many of these living organisms are used as our food resources.
Others are linked to our food less directly, like bees as
pollinators and dispersers of plants, soil animals like worms,
which recycle nutrients for plant growth and fungi and termites
that break up dead plant material so that microorganisms can act
on the detritus to replenish soil nutrients.




Classification of Natural Resources

There are various methods of categorizing natural resources. These
include:

Source of Origin
Stage of Human Use
By Renewability

On the basis of origin, natural resources may be divided into the
following categories:




(A) Biotic:-
Biotic resources are obtained from the biosphere (living and
organic material), such as forests, animals, birds, and fish and
the materials that can be obtained from them.

Fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum are also included in this
category because they are formed from decayed organic matter.

(B) Abiotic:-
Abiotic resources are non-living, non-organic material.




Examples of abiotic resources include land, fresh water, air
and heavy metals including ores such as gold, iron, silver,
copper etc.

Considering their stage of development, natural resources may be
referred to in the following ways:

(A) Potential Resources:-
Potential resources are those that exist in a region and may be
used in the future.

For example, petroleum may exist in many parts of India,
having sedimentary rocks but until the time it is actually drilled
out and put into use, it remains a potential resource.

(B) Actual Resources:-
Actual resources have been surveyed, their quantity and quality
determined and are being used in present times.




The development of an actual resource, such as wood processing
depends upon the technology available and the cost involved.

(C) Reserve Resources:-
The part of an actual resource which can be developed
profitably in the future is called a reserve resource.

(D) Stock Resources:-
Stock resources are those that have been surveyed but cannot be
used by organisms due to lack of technology. For example:
hydrogen.

Renewability is a very popular topic and many natural resources can
he categorized as either renewable or non-renewable:




(A) Renewable resources
Are the ones that can be replenished naturally, some of these
resources like sunlight, air, wind etc are continuously available
and their quantity is not noticeably affected by human
consumption.

Though many renewable resources do not have such a rapid
recovery rate, these resources are susceptible to depletion by
over-use. Resources from a human use perspective are classified
as renewable only so long as the rate of replenishment /
recovery exceeds that of the rate of consumption.




(B) Non-renewable resources
Are resources that form extremely slowly and those that do not
naturally form in the environment.

Minerals are the most common resource included in this
category.

By the human use perspective resources are non-renewable
when their rate of consumption exceeds the rate of
replenishment / recovery, a good example of these are fossil
fuels which are in this category because their rate of formation
is extremely slow (potentially millions of years), which means
they are considered as non-renewable from a human use
perspective.

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Green Olympiad 2014 Study Material

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What are Natural Resources?

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