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Humans depend on Earth’s land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for many different resources. This performance expectation bundle focuses on the natural resources that the Earth provides and their abundance or lack thereof as the Earth’s human population increases.

Students can evaluate competing data, hypotheses, and/or conclusions in scientific texts and other forms of media to determine how materials continuously move through Earth’s various cycles (e.g. water cycle, rock cycle, nitrogen cycle, carbon cycle, etc.) to be used and reused at different stages of these cycles. When humans use natural resources, they may remove them from the cycle thereby removing them from the system. Students can evaluate the cause and effect relationships between human use of resources and the impact on Earth’s systems. These resources may end up in landfills or at the bottom of the ocean. Many renewable resources are living and can replenish themselves as long as they aren’t used at a rate faster than they can be renewed and as long as their environment remains intact (e.g. trees, crops, and fish). Soil, sunlight, wind, and the tides are non-living examples of renewable resources. Resources, like fresh water. are considered limited even though they are renewable because there is such a small amount available for use (i.e. Only 2.5% of all water on Earth is fresh, and of that, only 0.3% is readily available as surface water.) Non-Renewable resources, like the fossil fuels we burn for energy and minerals used for making metals, can take millions of years to form and are not replaceable over human lifetimes.

These resources are distributed unevenly around the planet as a result of past geologic processes. For example, metallic ores are most abundant in areas with past volcanic and hydrothermal activity associated with subduction zones. Fossil fuels are found in areas that were once seas due to the burial of organic marine sediments and subsequent geologic traps. The plains have flat land and fertile soil for growing crops that comes from active weathering and deposition of rock. Through consideration of cause and effect relationships, students can construct a scientific explanation, based on evidence, for how the uneven distributions of Earth’s mineral, energy, and groundwater resources are the result of past and current geoscience processes.

Typically, as human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase, so do the negative impacts on Earth unless the activities and technologies involved (e.g., recycling, conservation, alternative energy) are engineered otherwise. Human population is growing at an exponential rate. According to the United Nations report The World at Six Billion, before the time of the Industrial Revolution, around 1807, it had taken all of human history for world population to reach one billion. The world's population reached 2 billion by 1927, 123 years later. It took only 33 additional years to gain another 3 billion people. A mere 14 years later the population was 4 billion and in another 13 years the population had reached 5 billion people. As of 2011, the world population had increased to 7 billion people and is projected to increase to 8 billion by around 2023. This rapid increase, along with humanity’s escalation in consumption of natural resources, can have a lasting impact on the sustainability of Earth’s resources. Sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Through this bundle, students can construct arguments for what it will take for Earth to maintain sustainability. Students can be prompted to gather data and utilize mathematical reasoning as evidence for arguments about sustainability. Students can also evaluate existing sustainability arguments or other students’ arguments. Example argument: To live sustainably, Earth’s resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished. Without the development of technologies, such as alternative fuels, as well as a change in the attitudes and activities of the people living here, Earth may not reach a sustainable level.

Since any engineered solution to the problem is dependent on an understanding of the cause and effect relationship between the events, students should be able to argue from evidence when attributing negative impacts on Earth’s systems to increases in human population and percapita consumption of natural resources. 

Students Will...

• Construct an explanation describing how humans depend on Earth’s natural resources to live.
• Analyze data to determine that Earth’s natural resources are found in the atmosphere, biosphere, land, and oceans.
• Engage in argument from evidence that some resources can be regenerated for our use, while others are either renewable or replaceable over human lifetimes.
• Construct an explanation based on evidence that various physical processes Earth has undergone in the past have resulted in the formation of natural resources that are distributed unevenly around the planet.
• Construct an argument that supports the claim that as the human population grows, so does its effect on the environment.
• Analyze data to determine that an increase in per-capita consumption of natural resources can result in negative impacts on Earth.
• Evaluate competing data, hypotheses, and/or conclusions in scientific texts and other forms of media to determine whether activities and technologies (e.g. recycling, conservation and the development of new alternative energy sources) are reducing negative impacts on Earth’s natural resources. 

Misconceptions

Actual Concept

1. If we run out of oil and gas, we will just find more.
2. "Man-made" materials do not come from mineral resources.
3. Green energy leaves no carbon footprint.
4. Few products we use every day have anything to do with taking rocks and minerals from the ground.
5. Earth and its systems are too big to be affected by human actions.
6. Earth is both an endless supply of resources and a limitless sink for the waste products of our society. 

1. Fossil fuels are a finite resource at the rate that they are being consumed.
2. Minerals are used to make many “man-made” materials.
3. Green energy still leaves a carbon footprint, although much smaller than other types of energy sources.
4. Rocks are composed of minerals. Minerals are used to make many “man-made” materials.
5. Human actions are capable of effecting the Earth and its systems.
6. Most of Earth’s resources are limited and finite and the Earth is not a limitless sink for society’s waste products.