Natural Resources

1. Natural Resources Natural resource � any part of the natural environment that is used by humans for their benefit

2. Renewable or Nonrenewable? Whether a resource is �renewable� or "nonrenewable" is about how long nature takes to renew it. 

3. Renewable Resources Natural resources that are replaced or recycled by natural processes. Examples are oxygen, water, nitrogen, carbon, and other essential substances, as well as, plants, animals, and food crops.

4. Natural populations are renewable resources. When human demands decrease the numbers of natural organisms, extinction may occur.

5. Extinction � the disappearance of a species when the last of its members dies. Although species become extinct naturally, humans are causing the extinction of species at a much faster rate than natural processes. The primary human cause of extinctions is habitat destruction.

6. Threatened species � when a population begins declining rapidly. African elephants decreased from 3 million to 700,000 in twenty years.

7. Endangered species � when the numbers become so low that extinction is possible. Manatees, Florida panther, California condor, Sea turtles are all in danger of extinction.

8. Nonrenewable Resources Nonrenewable resources are those which cannot be replenished by nature within our lifetimes, and are therefore in limited supply. Examples are metals (including aluminum, tin, iron, silver, uranium, gold, and copper), minerals (such as phosphorus and such things as topsoil), fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas), and groundwater.

9. Fossil Fuels When demands of natural resources increase and exceeds the supply, the price of those resources increases until almost no one except the very wealthy can afford those resources. Things such as fossil fuels, lumber, etc. might fit into this category.

10. Example: Gasoline Prices

11. Groundwater The amount of fresh water available for human use is about 0.1 percent of all of the available water on Earth. Freshwater is in such short supply that it is going to become more necessary to recycle and conserve this resource. Clean water is one of the necessities of healthy human life. We can do without fossil fuels, electricity, cars, etc. but not clean water.

13. Your Local Water Supply Source-for all subdivisions in the School District is through wells. Each subdivision has at least one well where water is drawn from an aquifer and placed into a supply tank. It is tested by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission for standards for drinking water.

14. Before being sent to the pipes leading to your house, it is treated with chlorine to kill any microorganisms present and fluoride is added to prevent tooth decay. All water coming to your house is drinkable.

15. When water goes down the drain (sink, dishwasher, clothes washer, toilet) is goes to a sewage treatment plant. There aerobic decomposer bacteria break down all organic matter. Water remains in the sewage treatment plant for approximately 24 hrs. When it is released, the water is very clear. It is treated with chlorine to kill all of the bacteria and then with sulfur dioxide to remove the chlorine before it is released into the creek. Solids left over from the sewage treatment process are called sludge. They are usually in a semi liquid state and either transported to a landfill or sold to become fertilizer.

16. Water from sewage treatment plants in Lexington Woods, Northgate, and North Spring all empty into Spring Creek.

17. Water from sewage treatment plants in Birnam Woods, Timberlane, North Hills, the apartments along Cypress Creek on Interstate 45, Greengate, Postwood, and Fairfax all empty into Cypress Creek.

18. Both Spring and Cypress Creek run into Lake Houston which is one of the water supplies for the City of Houston.

19. Subsidence-irreversible sinking of the ground surface caused by aquifer depletion. This area of Harris and Montgomery Counties is slowly sinking because of all of the groundwater that is being drawn from the ground. Large areas of many square miles are slowly sinking. Some places in the Jersey Village area have subsided as much as four feet over several square miles. This is going to increase the chances of flooding in these areas when more than normal rainfall is received. Result of Using Groundwater

20. As a result, the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District, which is a State Agency, has dictated that all of the subdivisions in this area are supposed to go to surface water by the year 2030. The city of Houston has agreed to sell all of the subdivisions water from Lake Houston. When this happens, we will be drinking recycled water, because our waste water goes to Lake Houston, and that will be our drinking water supply. At the present time, the City of Houston has some of the cleanest and purest water of any city in the United States. Our water would be clean and pure even though it is coming from Lake Houston and is being reused.

21. All runoff water from parking lots, streets, lawns, etc. runs into a ditch and directly into the creeks. Anything (pesticides, fertilizer, oil on parking lots, trash on parking lots, etc.) that runs off is going to the creeks without being treated in any way. Runoff to our Creeks