06-08-2024

HYS 501 Natural resources, society

and environment

Prof. Nitin Khandelwal

Assistant Professor, Department of Hydrology
[email protected]

Course structure
• Credit distribution= 2 0 0
• Total lecture sessions= 28
• Marks distribution (100)
• Class assignments, presentations, and quizzes= 20
• Attendance= 10
• MTE= 30
• ETE= 40

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Course structure: Learning objective

• Introduction to Earth's resources and their environmental interactions
• Energy resources, petroleum and renewables,
• Mineral extraction processes, and associated pollution.
• Soil and water resources, composition, pollutants, global usage, and
degradation.
• Testing soil and water quality parameters
• Sustainable resource use

Earth and us: Save the planet?

Consider 1 calendar year is equal to the age of Earth, 4.6 billion years.
In this case,
• Earth formed on January 1
• The first oxygen in the atmosphere did not occur until July
• Mammals did not make their appearance until December 18
• The first human being arrived on the scene on December 31 at 6 P.M.
and
• Recorded history began only 48 seconds before midnight on
December 31!

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Natural resources, environment and us

Case Study 1: Aral Sea

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Case Study 2: Easter Island

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Lectures scheme
• Natural resource: geological occurrence, available reserves
worldwide, Indian context, Environmental concerns and sustainability

Natural resources, environment and us:

Introduction

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Introduction

• Resources are divided into living and nonliving resources

• Energy must be added to nonliving resources to produce metals, fossil fuels,
etc.

Resource production: natural vs human inputs

Walther (2014) Ch 01

Introduction (cont.)

• Renewable resources
• Replenished shortly after being used
• Include solar energy, organic matter and its derivatives, water, wind, forests,
and fish
• Nonrenewable resources
• Cannot be remade, regrown, or regenerated on a time scale comparative to
consumption
• Include fossil fuels and metals extracted from the earth

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Ways of resource comparison

Abundance vs Value

Data from: Wellmer, F. W. and Becker-Platen, J. D., 2002,

Sustainable development and the exploitation of mineral
and energy resources: a review, Inter. Jour. Earth Sci., v. 91, p. 723-745.

Mineral Resources and Reserves

• Resource evaluation
• For a resource to become a reserve:
• Location, concentration, quality, and quantity of the resource must be known or estimated
• Must be extractable economically
• Subdivisions of resources (Certainty variations)
• Measured reserves (frequent geological sampling with high certainty of shape, size, amount)
• Indicated reserves (Less frequent sampling but good confidence)
• Inferred resources (Only geological continuity basis)
• Possible (undiscovered) resources (Knowledge based)

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Mineral Resources and Reserves (cont.)

• Relation of reserves to resources for materials found

in the earth

Figure: Relation of reserves to resources for materials found in the earth.

Population growth and sustainability

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Population Growth

• Major driver of increased resource

use
• World population increases by 75
million each year (135M-60M)
• G= 75/7= 1.07%
• From 1830 to 1930, the world’s
population doubled from 1 to 2
billion people.
• By 1970 it had nearly doubled again,
and by the year 2010 there were
nearly 7 billion people on Earth. Figure: World population as a function of time indicating some
significant world events.
Population of WORLD 2024 - PopulationPyramid.net

Population Growth (cont.)

• Mathematics of growth
• Equation for compounded (exponential) growth
dx
 kx
dt
• For this equation, k is a constant called the growth rate giving the rate of
increase of x with time, t

• Year=0 (2010, population= 6.83 billion), G= 1.1%

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Population Growth: analogy

• Example: saving bank account

• Example: salary starting from 1 cent
and doubling each day (> $10 million
in 30 days

• Two aspects
• Growth rate
• Doubling time (D = 70/G)

Doubling time (D = 70/G)

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Population Growth (cont.)

• Mathematics of growth

Think about 2010

• India (11,81,263,000 & 1.44%) and
• China (13,37,700,000 & 0.6%)

Population of WORLD 2024 - PopulationPyramid.net

Population Growth (cont.)

• Fertility
• Current average fertility rate of humankind is 2.56

• Replacement rate in a population with zero population growth (ZPG) is

somewhat greater

• If a population has an unusually large number of children exceeding its ZPG,

the added population will pass through their child bearing years increasing
the population even if their fertility is 2.1 or less

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Distribution of People on the Earth as a Function of

Time (cont.)
• The demographic transition
• Shift from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates
• Significant factors include
• better nutrition,
• greater access to medical care,
• improved sanitation, and
• more widespread immunization

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un?tab=chart&time=1950..2023&facet=none&country=OWID_WRL~IND

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Distribution of People on the Earth as a Function of

Time
• European population is
expected to decrease
while the African and
Latin American
populations will increase
rapidly

Figure 01.15: Past and estimated future

population of the indicated region plotted
on a log scale.
Data from: United Nations, Department of
Economics and Social Affairs

Distribution of People on the Earth as a Function of

Time (cont.)
• Age distribution of the human population

• Age structure is important because it is related to socioeconomic issues.

• Countries with a high percentage of young people under age 15, such as
Kenya and Haiti, will have to invest more in education and youth programs.
• Countries with a young population may also have difficulty with employment

• Countries with an older population, such as Italy, will have to provide more
for health programs for the elderly. Providing retirement benefits may be
difficult as the percentage of older people grows compared to people working
to support social services.

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Population pyramid
• https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2024/

The Earth’s Human Carrying Capacity

• Carrying capacity within a given habitat gives the maximum

sustainable abundance of a species in the habitat
• When a species population is at its carrying capacity:
• Birth and death rates are equal
• Size of the population does not change with time
• Carrying capacity highlights habitat limitations

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The Earth’s Human Carrying Capacity (cont.)

• Equation for development of a steady-

state population
d ( population )  K  population 
 k x population x  
dt  K 

• For this equation, K is the carrying

capacity and k is the growth rate
• It has been argued that the earth may
be able to support 40 to 50 billion
people

The Earth’s Human Carrying Capacity (cont.)

• Carrying capacity may increase with time because of humans’ ability

to alter their environment and make rational choices
• Causes of economic stagnation
• Running out of a nonrenewable resource
• Slow replenishment of a renewable resource
• Lack of government intervention

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The Earth does not need saving, the humans do…

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