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Your Mission. . . |
The most noticable types of renewable resources are those consisting of, or produced by living things. These include agricultural crops, animal forage, forest crops, and wild and domestic animals. All of these can reproduce their population as long as environmental conditions remain in a good or favorable condition. In ideal conditions, all can be harvested without fear of diminishing the supply. If the rate at which humans harvest these crops exceeds their rate of growth the resources will be depleted.
A renewable resource can be called a "mined" resource if it is removed from the earth at a rate that does not permit its renewal, reproduction, or regrowth. An example of this would be cows which graze in a pasture. If the pasture that feeds the cow is not allowed to grow or is poisened by the over-use of pesticides then the pasture can no longer be used to nourish the cow. The cow can no longer thrive and will eventually become a nonrenewable resource.
Solar Energy, is the energy produced by the sun. Since the Sun is expected to last hundreds of millions of years, Solar Energy is said to be inexhaustible meaning it can never be used up. Therefore, it is considered a renewable resource. That energy supply, however, depends on the condition of the atmosphere, which can be affected by human activities. For example, scientists warn that even a limited nuclear war would darken the sky with smoke and other particulate matter, causing a marked drop in surface temperatures known as nuclear winter. Other examples of renewable resources include water, and air.
Nonrenewable resources are those resources which recycle or reproduce over a very long period of time. The time it takes for these resources to renew or reproduce is called the "cycling time". These cycling times can be so long that they may take hundreds of generations to renew. So for our purposes the resource is nonrenewable.
Fossil Fuels are those organic materials such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas. These are produced from chemical changes in the Earth's crust. Other examples of nonrenewable resources are nuclear fuels which are also used to produce heat energy, and minerals such as iron and aluminum and precious metals such as gold, platinum and silver.
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