Natural Resources

What are natural resources?

Natural resources are items we take from the Earth to use for living. Who makes natural resources? Can you name some natural resources?

Fossil fuels are natural resources.

Fossil fuels are made out of plants and animals that died many, many years ago…..over 50 thousand years ago. Here is how it goes…

Plants or animals die Bummer, I died!

Sediments pile up on top of the plant or animal’s body for thousands of years.

The body starts to rot under all of that pressure from the layers.

This takes many hundreds of thousands of years to happen.

The rotted body starts to decompose and turns into fossil fuels.

Humans dig into the ground to dig out the fossil fuels.

We mine out the COAL.

and burn it in our homes for heat or electricity.

But Coal creates A LOT of pollution.

Or we bring it out in oil wells…..

Once again to burn it in our homes for heat or electricity.

But oil creates A LOT of pollution too.

Or we pump it out as natural gas..

Once again to burn it in our homes for heat or electricity.

But natural gas creates A LOT of pollution too.

Plus……it is very expensive to mine coal or to pump natural gas and oil from the ground.

Plus……we are running out of fossil fuels….so we need to find other sources of energy.

And once we run out of fossil fuels, we can not get them back again …. That is why they are called non renewable resources.

Can you think of any new resources we can use for energy???

Soil is considered a renewable resource because when we use it, we take the minerals and vitamins out of it.

Once gone, we must replace those minerals and vitamins with fertilizer….or the plants we plant in that location will not grow strong. They will be weak and not produce much food. or

Renewable resources are things we take from the earth that we may use up, but we can always get more of them. Can you name some renewable resources? Trees Vegetable and fruit plants Soil

Inexhaustible Resources are resources from the earth that we can use, but we will NEVER run out of. Sometimes are called Reusable Resources. Can you name some inexhaustible resources? Water Air or wind Sun’s energy