2. Natural Resources
• Renewable resources
• Nonrenewable resources
Human activities affect the
quality and quantity of our
renewable and nonrenewable resources.
3. Sustainable Use of Resources
Sustainability
- intelligent and responsible management
and conservation of our resources
4. Wastes
• Biodegradable wastes
– materials that can be broken down by microorganisms
– e.g. organic wastes (sewage and scraps of food)
• Non-biodegradable wastes
– can not be broken down by natural processes or are
broken down very slowly
– e.g. asbestos, glass, certain plastics and metals,
radioactive wastes and chemicals
5. Biological Magnification
• pollutants accumulate in the tissues of organisms
• further concentrated up the food chain (because the
biomass at a given trophic level is produced from a
much larger biomass ingested from the level below)
• e.g. pesticides and industrial waste products
DDT was once used to prevent malaria, yellow fever, lice and the spread of insect pests DDT poisoning in fish and birds
