Natural Resources and Energy Paper

Natural Resources and Energy Paper
SCI/256
[ September 28, 2011 ]
Wilson Doucet

Natural Resources and Energy
Natural resources (2011), according to Dictionary.com, are natural materials such as land, coal, water, and mineral deposits. Humans have become totally dependent on natural resources and energy. Energy is defined as, “power which may be translated into motion, overcoming resistance, or effecting physical change” ("Energy," 2011.) Almost everything is made up of natural resources and energy. Clothes, houses, books, streets, and food are made up of natural resources (Media Awareness Network, 2010). According to Marine Science (2009), “marine natural resources include both biological and physical sources. Biological sources include anything attributed to life forms whereas physical sources are considered to be those things that are not part of life processes. In a few instances some resources are both biological and physical.” (para. 1). Marine ecosystems will be the focal ecosystem of this paper. This paper will also include the effects that the human population has on the marine ecosystem, a management practice for sustainability and conservation of marine natural resources, and the risk and benefits of extracting renewable and nonrenewable energy resources from the marine ecosystem.
Effects
With the staggering increase in population, the marine system has struggled to keep up with the food demand. Statistics show that in the year 2000 Louisiana’s population were 4,468,976; since then the population has grown by nearly 65,000 which was last recorded in the year 2010. This population increase results in the growing demand on the seafood industry which is heavily supplied by the Gulf of Mexico. Oysters, shrimp, and fish are among some of the many species whose population is drastically decreasing as the human population grows. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “Gulf fisheries are some of the most productive in the world. In 2008... [continues]

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