An ecological resource is anything required by an organism for normal maintenance growth, and reproduction. Examples include habitat, food, water and shelter. And economic resource is anything obtained from the environment (the earth’s life support system) to meet human needs and wants. Examples include food, water, shelter, manufactured goods, transportation’s, communication, and recreation. On our short human time scale, we classify the material resources we get from the environment as renewable, potentially renewable, or nonrenewable.
Some resources, such as solar energy, fresh air, winds, fresh surface water, fertile soil, and wild edible plants, are directly available for use by us and other organisms. Other resources, such a petroleum, iron, groundwater, and modern crops, aren’t directly available. They become useful to us only with some effort and technological ingenuity. Petroleum, for example, was a mysterious fluid until we learned how to find, extract, and convert it into gasoline, heating oil, and other products that could be sold at affordable prices.
Solar energy is called renewable or perpetual resource because on a human time scale this solar capital is essentially inexhaustible. It is expected to last at least 6 billion years as the sum completes its life cycle.
A potentially renewable resource can be replenished fairly rapidly through natural process. Examples of such resources are forest tress, grassland grasses, wind animals, fresh lake and stream water, ground water, fresh air, and fertile soil. One important potentially renewable resource for us and other species is biological diversity, or biodiversity, which consists of the different life forms that can best survive the variety of conditions currently found on the earth.
However potentially renewable resource can be depleted. The highest rate at which a potentially renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply is called sustainable yield.
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