Environmental Science / Unit 1: Introduction to Environmental Science
1.4 Sustainability and Natural Resources
Notes
Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without reducing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
- Renewable resources are replenished naturally on a human timescale (sunlight, wind, timber if replanted).
- Nonrenewable resources form so slowly that they are used up faster than they form (coal, oil, minerals).
- Sustainable yield is the amount of a renewable resource that can be taken without reducing its supply.
- The tragedy of the commons describes how shared resources get overused when each person acts in their own interest.
- The three pillars of sustainability are environment, economy, and society.
- Example: a fishery that catches fewer fish than the population reproduces each year is within its sustainable yield.
Practice
Which is a nonrenewable resource?
Natural gas formed over millions of years and is used far faster than it forms.
Ten ranchers share one pasture. Each adds more cattle for personal profit, and the grass is destroyed. This illustrates:
Individual self-interest overuses a shared resource.
A lake produces 5,000 kg of fish per year through reproduction. Which harvest is within the sustainable yield?
Harvesting less than the amount replaced keeps the population stable.
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