Natural Resources and Sustainability Cheat Sheet

A printable reference covering renewable and nonrenewable resources, sustainability, ecological footprints, carrying capacity, and conservation strategies for grades 7-10.

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This cheat sheet covers natural resources, how humans use them, and how sustainability helps protect supplies for the future. Students need these ideas to understand energy choices, water use, land management, waste, and pollution. It connects science concepts to real decisions about conservation, development, and environmental impact. The core ideas include renewable resources, nonrenewable resources, sustainable yield, ecological footprints, and carrying capacity. Important formulas compare resource use, population size, recycling rates, and percent change over time. A sustainable system keeps resource use at or below the rate that nature can replace it and reduces waste before damage becomes long term.

Key Facts

A renewable resource can be replaced on a human time scale if use rate <= replacement rate.
A nonrenewable resource forms so slowly that human use removes it much faster than nature replaces it.
Per capita resource use = total resource use / population.
Percent change in resource use = ((new use - old use) / old use) x 100%.
R/P ratio = known reserves / annual consumption, which estimates how many years a nonrenewable resource may last.
Sustainable yield = natural replacement rate, and harvesting should stay at or below this amount.
Recycling rate = recycled material / total waste x 100%.
Overshoot occurs when ecological footprint > biocapacity, meaning demand is greater than what ecosystems can renew.

Vocabulary

Natural resource: A material or energy source from Earth that living things use, such as water, soil, forests, minerals, or sunlight.
Renewable resource: A resource that can be naturally replaced in a short time if it is not used faster than it regenerates.
Nonrenewable resource: A resource, such as coal, oil, natural gas, or metal ore, that forms over millions of years and can be depleted.
Sustainability: The practice of meeting current needs while preserving resources and healthy ecosystems for future generations.
Ecological footprint: A measure of the land, water, and resources needed to support a person, group, or activity and absorb its wastes.
Carrying capacity: The largest population an environment can support over time without exhausting resources or causing major damage.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Calling all natural resources renewable is wrong because some resources, such as fossil fuels and metal ores, are used much faster than they form.
Ignoring population size when comparing resource use is wrong because total use can rise even if each person uses less.
Confusing recycling with conservation is wrong because recycling reduces waste, while conservation means using fewer resources in the first place.
Assuming renewable resources cannot run out is wrong because forests, fish populations, soil, and groundwater can be depleted if use rate is greater than replacement rate.
Using percent change with the wrong starting value is wrong because percent change must divide by the old value, not the new value.

Practice Questions

1 A town uses 48,000 liters of water per day and has 1,200 people. What is the per capita water use per day?
2 A school recycled 180 kg of paper out of 600 kg of total paper waste. What is the recycling rate?
3 Known reserves of a mineral are 900,000 tons, and annual consumption is 30,000 tons per year. What is the R/P ratio in years?
4 A forest grows back 2,000 trees per year, but a company cuts 2,800 trees per year. Explain whether this harvest is sustainable and what change would make it sustainable.