Renewable and nonrenewable resources Category: Environment, conservation, and resource management Nature provides numerous energy resources.. Renewable Energy Sources The most abundant r
Trang 1ing seismic studies to decode the
in-terior of the Earth; sonar for probing
the ocean floor; and medicine using
X rays and CAT scans
Remote sensing developed from
several origins, both scientific and
technological Technologically, the
telescope, invented in the 1600’s, and
photography, invented in the 1840’s,
were significant advances in our
abil-ity to remotely sense our
environ-ment Then, the discovery of energy
(frequencies) beyond the familiar
vis-ible light, in the 1860’s, by James
Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
demon-strated that our eyes were fairly
lim-ited in gathering information that
was available in the universe Couple
this with the aerial perspectives
af-forded by ballooning (developed in the 1780’s), flight
(1900’s), and space travel (1950’s), and humanity’s
concept of its environment and universe changed
dra-matically
Early Earth Resources Satellites
Remote sensing as a stand-alone discipline had a
par-allel development with the space race of the 1950’s
and 1960’s The advantages of a perspective from
space became apparent with the National
Aeronau-tics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) April 1,
1960, launch of TIROS 1 (the Television Infrared
Ob-servations Satellite), whose mission was to observe
weather patterns The advantages to meteorologists
and weather forecasting were obvious, but there was
other information to be garnered from these types of
images
On July 23, 1972, the first of a series of satellites,
Earth Resources Technology Satellite 1 (ERTS-1), was
launched with the specific mission of remotely
sens-ing the Earth’s surface The success of this mission
en-couraged the launch of a succession of similar
satel-lites with a different name: the Landsat series This
ongoing effort has given the scientific community
de-cades of continuous coverage of the Earth’s surface
Passive vs Active Sensors
These satellites, and others from private companies
and governments other than that of the United States,
carry a variety of imaging scanners that look down
on the Earth and transmit digital images to various
ground stations There are two types of sensors: active and passive Active sensors that transmit to the target and collect bounces back via “radio detection and ranging” (radar) are examples Passive sensors collect energy that is reflected from the target; for example, a camera collects light The majority of remote-sensing satellites utilize multiple passive sensors These are designed to record reflected energy at different elec-tromagnetic frequencies, usually in both the visible and infrared portion of the spectrum The advantage
to combining different frequencies is that more con-trast can be discerned between targets that are similar For example, the green leaf of a corn plant can be dis-tinguished from the green leaf of a watermelon— from space This discrimination is based on the re-flected energy, or the object’s spectral signature
Spectral Signatures The key to interpreting a satellite image is in under-standing the spectral signatures of the various objects
in the image Passive scanners receive the energy from the Sun that is reflected from the target (for example, green plants) After it has passed through the atmo-sphere and interacted with the object, it passes through the atmosphere again and is collected by the satellite’s sensors The atmosphere acts as a filter of some frequencies, and the object itself both absorbs and reflects frequencies The signal (energy) that is reflected into space is different from the energy that left the Sun This altered signal is specific to the object and is its “spectral signature.” Nonliving objects—
The U.S Air Force Lockheed U-2 is a surveillance aircraft capable of accurate remote sensing (United States Air Force)
Trang 2rocks, soil, water—tend to have more stable
signa-tures, but plants can vary depending on species, age,
and health
Thematic Mapping
By identifying the spectral signature of a target, all
ob-jects of the same signature can be mapped as the
same, or the same theme This is known as thematic
mapping For example, a cornfield will have a
charac-teristic spectral signature that is different from an
ad-jacent field of potatoes Therefore, by identifying the
spectral signature of the corn, all similar signatures
within the image can be mapped as “corn.” These
im-ages are often color-coded to enhance discrimination
between targets This is known as “false color”
imag-ery because the colors are assigned to enhance
con-trast and are not descriptive of the object as seen in
sunlight As the data are recorded in a digital format,
all of the pixels (picture elements) that compose the
image can be counted and the extent or area of any
signature can be measured For example, an image or
images of the Midwest can be collected, the spectral
signature of a crop (such as corn or wheat), can be
identified, and computer software can calculate the
area of crop on the ground, its health, and its stage of
development
This underscores the advantage of this technology
These types of thematic maps can be made over
re-gional areas with computer speed Geologists using
the perspective of space can map large geologic
struc-tures, identify mineral deposits and potential
fossil-fuel deposits, and inventory surface water resources
Further, in conjunction with land-use planners,
geolo-gists can identify geologic hazards such as floodplains,
sinkholes (karst topography), unstable slopes, and
fault zones Biologists and botanists use
remote-sensing data to map the diversity of plant
communi-ties and even to determine the health of ecosystems
Foresters can inventory timber resources and the
health of forests Farmers can map soil moisture or
identify a frost-damaged orange tree, for example,
be-fore stress becomes obvious to a trained observer on
the ground Land-use planners can map the various
types of land use (urban, suburban, and rural) and
de-termine growth patterns of cities and communities
over time
The Terra System
The mission of NASA’s Terra system (formerly EOS
AM-1), launched in December 18, 1999, is to research
multidisciplinary problems directed primarily by re-searchers from the United States, Japan, and Canada Terra’s broad goals are to investigate Earth systems; interactions among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere; and changes in the global climate system Terra has a design life of approxi-mately fifteen years (2000-2015) The five main sen-sors it carries are:
• the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emissions and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), which provides high-resolution imagery over fifteen spectral win-dows; it can develop thematic maps of surface tem-perature (reflectance) and elevation;
• the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), which measures solar-reflected and Earth-emitted radiation from the Earth’s surface to the top of the atmosphere;
• the Multi-Angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR), which is composed of nine cameras using four different spectral windows; it primarily mea-sures changes of atmospheric energy over time;
• the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradi-ometer (MODIS), which captures imagery over thirty-six spectral windows and maps the entire Earth in a one- or two-day period; and
• the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT), which (as its name implies) monitors pollution changes in the lower level of the atmo-sphere, which has the greatest impact on life
Perspective The science and technology of remote sensing are de-veloping at a critical time for the citizens of the twenty-first century Global population, approaching seven billion in 2009, was expected to be nine or ten billion
by the middle of the twenty-first century At the same time, a long-term trend toward increased socioeco-nomic status for nations such as China and India, com-bined with population, require ever-more resources
to support an interlocking global economy The abil-ity to explore, inventory, and manage natural re-sources to maintain this growth is greatly enhanced However, remote sensing goes beyond the search for raw materials to sustain humanity; it can help manage human resources as well The data assists the under-standing of the Earth’s changing climate, specifically rainfall patterns This has a direct impact on where people can live and future migration patterns By ob-serving the growth of cities and communities over time, these data can assist in the most efficient
Trang 3use planning The “big picture” perspective from
space coupled with the speed of computers to
inter-pret this imagery is a timely and welcome tool for the
twenty-first century
Richard C Jones
Further Reading
Campbell, James B Introduction to Remote Sensing 4th
ed New York: Guilford Press, 2007
Jensen, John R Remote Sensing of the Environment: An
Earth Resource Perspective 2d ed Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2007
Ustin, Susan L., ed Manual of Remote Sensing: Remote
Sensing for Natural Resource Management and
Environ-mental Monitoring 3d ed New York: Wiley, 2004.
Web Sites
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society
http://www.grss-ieee.org/
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
Tutorial on Remote Sensing
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration Earth Observatory
Remote Sensing: Introduction and History
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/
RemoteSensing/remote.php
See also: Agriculture industry; Biosphere;
Geo-graphic information systems; Geology; Hydrology
and the hydrologic cycle; use planning;
Land-use regulation and control; Landsat satellites and
sat-ellite technologies; Lithosphere; Population growth;
Resources for the Future; U.S Geological Survey;
Weather and resources
Renewable and nonrenewable
resources
Category: Environment, conservation, and
resource management
Nature provides numerous energy resources
Nonre-newable resources were the primary source of energy for
the twentieth century However, with the depletion of
nonrenewables, interest in renewable forms of energy has generated increasing research and development of renewables.
Background Nonrenewable resources cannot be readily replaced after consumption A renewable resource is one that
is continuously available, such as solar energy, or one that can be replaced within several decades, such as wood
Nonrenewable Energy Sources Nonrenewable resources may be subdivided into four categories: metals (such as copper and aluminum), industrial minerals (such as lime and soda ash), con-struction materials (sand and gravel), and energy resources (coal, oil, and uranium) Of the nonfuel substances, metals are most prone to depletion by overproduction, but recycling can prolong their use-ful lifetime almost indefinitely
Construction materials, although not readily recy-clable, are abundant and ubiquitous in the Earth’s crust, rendering them a virtually unlimited resource Although less plentiful, the most widely used indus-trial minerals are unlikely to be depleted in the near future; on the scale of centuries, however, they are an endangered resource if current levels of production are maintained It is probable that environmental concerns will reduce future production
The major forms of nonrenewable energy produc-tion are fossil fuel combusproduc-tion (using oil and coal) and nuclear fission (using uranium) Of the total en-ergy consumed by Americans, only 7 percent is from renewable resources, while 85 percent is from fossil fuels, predominantly oil
Coal was the first fossil fuel to be used extensively, and it remains the most abundant Coal can be burned directly or converted into petroleum or petroleum products, through the expenditure of additional en-ergy When used as fuel, coal creates many problems Mines are environmentally destructive, and coal is the most difficult fossil fuel to transport When coal
is burned, vast quantities of sulfur compounds (which form sulfuric acid in the atmosphere) are released, while the carbon in the coal becomes carbon dioxide,
a greenhouse gas believed to contribute to global warming The carbon in coal also has many other valuable (nonpolluting) uses in the chemical in-dustry
Oil is the world’s major source of energy because it
Trang 4is abundant and relatively inexpensive Its high rate of
use will result in its depletion during the twenty-first
century When burned as gasoline in cars, it releases
carbon dioxide; various dangerous air pollutants,
such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides; and
uncombusted hydrocarbons (a major cause of
photo-chemical smog) Natural gas, formed when organic
materials decompose, is usually found with petroleum
reservoirs Its supply, rate of consumption, and
proba-ble future are comparaproba-ble to those of petroleum It is
widely used because it is relatively inexpensive, clean,
and nonpolluting (although it does add carbon to the
atmosphere)
Tar sands, principally found in Canada, are a
low-grade source of petroleum that is feasible to mine and
process only when oil prices are relatively high Two
additional problems limit this source: About as much
energy is required to extract usable oil as is
cre-ated when it is combusted, and the process has
raised environmental concerns Oil shales,
abun-dant in the western United States, appear
theoret-ically to be a major source of future petroleum
products The amount of oil tied up in shale
ex-ceeds the remaining total world reserve of oil To
extract oil, however, the shale must be mined and
heated by processes requiring large quantities of
water in regions where water is scarce
Addi-tionally, the total energy required for extraction
exceeds the energy created when the oil is
burned
Nuclear reactors produce energy through
con-trolled fission of uranium 235 No air pollution is
produced, the mining operations are relatively
small and safe, and the resource being consumed
has no other known use On the other hand,
reac-tor technology is sophisticated and elaborate,
and complicated devices are prone to
break-downs A reactor breakdown can have disastrous
consequences if radioactive materials are released
into the environment Of equal or greater
con-cern is how the by-products of nuclear power
pro-duction—nuclear waste—should be disposed of
over the long term
Renewable Energy Sources
The most abundant renewable energy resource is
solar energy, the source of most other renewables
as well as the original source of fossil fuels The
supply is enormous and inexhaustible, but most is
wasted because it occurs in a dilute form that
re-quires expensive hardware to concentrate Also, it reaches Earth in its most dilute form during the win-ter, when it is most needed for heating In cloudy re-gions it is not even available when demand for it is greatest
Like solar energy, wind represents a large and po-tentially inexhaustible source of energy However, when wind energy is used to generate electricity, ex-pensive collectors are required Wind energy is not feasible everywhere, and even when feasible it is not always available Power derived from moving water, such as that provided by hydroelectric dams, makes an important contribution to the world’s energy supply Many of the best sites have already been dammed, however, and development of a number of other sites
is unwise because of ecological reasons or the sites’ scenic beauty
A man hauls aluminum stoves through a street in Kabul, Afghanistan Aluminum is a nonrenewable resource (Zabi Tamanna/Xinhua/
Landov)
Trang 5Tidal energy utilizes the ebb and flow of tides to
create electricity by trapping seawater at the extremes
of high and low tide and releasing it through turbines
Although a potentially large energy source, it is
eco-nomically feasible only where there are naturally high
tides (4.5 meters or more) and where a narrow inlet
encloses a large bay
Geothermal energy uses the heat from natural hot
springs to create steam to power turbines, which are
used to create electricity Because the heat must be
close to the surface, there are few known sites from
which geothermal electrical energy can be extracted
economically Also, because pipelines must be run
over many hectares to collect steam, the
power-gener-ating stations tend to be ugly and noisy
Vegetation (biomass) energy uses plants or animal
products derived from plants as a source of fuel This
source includes wood, organic wastes, ethanol, and
methane gas from biodigestion This type of
renew-able resource is renewrenew-able only if harvesting is
con-trolled and if resources exist to cultivate the source
Thus, trees must be given sufficient time to mature,
and corn must be cultivated before ethanol can be
produced Although vegetation has a long history as a
source of fuel, efficient and sustainable techniques
have yet to be introduced
George R Plitnik
Further Reading
Boyle, Godfrey, ed Renewable Energy 2d ed New York:
Oxford University Press in association with the
Open University, 2004
Cassedy, Edward S., and Peter Z Grossman
Introduc-tion to Energy: Resources, Technology, and Society 2d ed.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998
Evans, Robert L Fueling Our Future: An Introduction to
Sustainable Energy Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 2007
González, Pablo Rafael Running Out: How Global
Shortages Change the Economic Paradigm New York:
Algora, 2006
Greiner, Alfred, and Willi Semmler The Global
Envi-ronment, Natural Resources, and Economic Growth New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008
Hinrichs, Roger A., and Merlin Kleinbach Energy: Its
Use and the Environment 4th ed Belmont, Calif.:
Thomson, Brooks/Cole, 2006
Kozlowski, Ryszard, Gennady Zaikov, and Frank Pudel,
eds Renewable Resources: Obtaining, Processing, and
Applying Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science, 2009.
Kruger, Paul Alternative Energy Resources: The Quest for
Sustainable Energy Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley &
Sons, 2006
Pimentel, David, ed Biofuels, Solar, and Wind as
Renew-able Energy Systems: Benefits and Risks New York:
Springer, 2008
Twidell, John, and Tony Weir Renewable Energy
Re-sources 2d ed New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006.
See also: Coal; Ethanol; Geothermal and hydrother-mal energy; Hazardous waste disposal; Hydroenergy; Nuclear energy; Nuclear waste and its disposal; Oil and natural gas distribution; Oil shale and tar sands; Solar energy; Tidal energy; Wind energy; Wood and charcoal as fuel resources
Reserve Mining controversy
Category: Historical events and movements Date: 1968-1980
The Reserve Mining Company was successfully prose-cuted for disposing of hazardous waste from its taco-nite mining into Lake Superior.
Definition The Reserve Mining controversy involved the dis-charge of taconite tailings into Lake Superior by the Reserve Mining Company The discharge created con-cern about health and environmental impacts and led to litigation The courts ruled against Reserve Mining
Overview The Reserve Mining Company was established in
1939 to mine taconite ores at Babbitt, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range Taconite is a low-grade iron ore that requires a processing facility to concentrate and pelletize the ore before it can be used The com-pany decided that the best way of disposing of the re-sulting tailings (waste) was by discharging them into Lake Superior The selected site was located at Silver Bay on the Lake Superior shore near Duluth The nec-essary permits were granted in December, 1947, and operations began in 1955 Within ten years, annual pellet output capacity at the processing plant had reached 9.7 million metric tons, with a water volume
of 1.9 million liters per minute
Trang 6There had been little concern about the tailings
discharge into Lake Superior at the permit hearings
or during the initial years of operation except by sport
fishermen This situation changed when the
Stod-dard report by the Department of the Interior and
state agencies in 1968 concluded that Reserve Mining
was polluting Lake Superior in violation of its permits
The report noted concerns about “green” water, trace
metals, fish mortality, asbestos-like fibers, and lake
eutrophication being associated with the discharge
This report was strongly rejected by Reserve Mining
There was growing concern about the tailings
dis-charge by the public as well, which led to citizen
groups fighting against it An unsuccessful series of
conferences was held to try to resolve the issues The
Environmental Protection Agency took over for the
Department of the Interior in 1970, and a lawsuit was
filed in federal court in 1972 to stop the discharge
As the trial began in 1973, a new finding changed
the entire focus of the environmental concern It was
determined that the asbestos-like fibers in the ore
were present in the drinking water of nearby
commu-nities such as Duluth, creating a concern about the
ef-fects on human health Duluth was forced to build a
filtration system that cost $6.9 million The initial
court judgment in 1974 ruled that the discharge must
stop A stay was given by the appeals court while an
ac-ceptable on-land site was to be located and developed
After the first judge was removed by the appeals court
for bias against Reserve Mining, the second judge also
found against Reserve Mining Reserve Mining and its
owners, Armco and Republic, were required to pay
more than $1 million in fines and to pay for the cost of
filtering Duluth’s drinking water before the filtration
plant was ready With the approval of an on-land
dis-posal site, discharge into Lake Superior ended in
1980
Gary A Campbell
See also: Environmental law in the United States;
Environmental Protection Agency; Eutrophication;
Lakes; Mining wastes and mine reclamation; Water
pollution and water pollution control
Residual mineral deposits
Categories: Geological processes and formations;
mineral and other nonliving resources
Residual mineral deposits are formed by chemical weathering processes that dissolve and remove unsired constituents of rocks, leaving behind valuable de-posits of insoluble minerals Examples include bauxite and residual iron, manganese, nickel, phosphate, and clays.
Background Residual mineral deposits are the result of residual concentration, a process whereby weathering removes undesired constituents from rock to leave behind a concentration of valuable minerals This residue, which is able to withstand further chemical weather-ing, can accumulate to form commercially significant deposits Important deposits of iron, aluminum, man-ganese, nickel, phosphate, clays, and other economic minerals have been formed by residual concentra-tion
Formation Residual mineral deposits form from rocks that con-tain valuable minerals that are either insoluble or al-ter to form insoluble compounds upon weathering; the undesired components of the rock are relatively soluble As the rocks undergo chemical weathering, the unwanted materials are gradually dissolved and carried away If the outcrop surface has low relief (so that physical weathering processes cannot remove sig-nificant amounts of the insoluble residues) and if the terrain remains stable over a period of time long enough to allow the residues to accumulate, a residual deposit can form Because chemical weathering is a slow process and the materials being removed (such
as calcite, feldspar, clay, and quartz) are often only slightly soluble, it may take millions of years for a re-sidual accumulation to develop that is of sufficient pu-rity and volume to be of commercial importance Warm, humid conditions are most conducive to the formation of residual deposits While ores can de-velop through residual concentration in a temperate climate, tropical and subtropical environments host a greater variety of residual deposits
Characteristics Residual mineral deposits frequently occur in regions where the climate is or was humid, subtropical, or tropical They form in relatively level depositional en-vironments, where physical weathering processes ex-ert a minimal influence The presence of iron oxides concentrated in the weathering zone typically imparts
Trang 7a deep red or brown color to deposits formed by
resid-ual concentration The removal of soluble material
generally leaves the deposits with a porous texture or
with a consistency resembling that of loose soil
Resid-ual deposits are usResid-ually underlain by the rock from
which they were derived
A particular form of residual deposit, laterite, is
characteristic of the hot, humid tropics Laterite is a
highly weathered red soil or surface material that is
rich in iron and aluminum oxides and hydroxides A
lateritic deposit forms after intense chemical
weather-ing has leached the parent rock of most of its silica
Al-ternating wet and dry seasons, high drainage rates,
and minimal physical erosion all contribute to laterite
formation
Residual Iron
Iron is present in most rocks, and residual iron
depos-its, including laterites, are widely distributed within
nonglaciated regions Residual concentration of iron
is particularly likely where limestone or extremely
iron-rich silicate rocks are exposed to warm, humid
conditions Significant residual-iron deposits include
those found in the southeastern United States, Brazil,
Venezuela, the West Indies, southern Europe, Africa,
and India
Residual Aluminum (Bauxite)
Bauxite, the chief ore of aluminum, is a lateritic
de-posit formed by residual concentration in tropical or
subtropical regions A mixture of several hydrated
aluminum oxides, bauxite deposits result from the
de-composition of aluminum silicate rocks that are high
in aluminum silicates and low in iron and free quartz
Warm rain water, groundwater, oxygen, carbon
diox-ide, and humic acid interact to break down the parent
rock The French deposits at Baux, from which
baux-ite derives its name, formed from limestones or clays
in limestones In Arkansas, Brazil, and French
Gui-ana, the source rock is nepheline syenite, an intrusive
igneous rock composed largely of alkali feldspars and
feldspathoids (minerals similar to feldspars but
con-taining less silica) Deposits in India formed from
ba-salt; those in Georgia, Alabama, Jamaica, and Guyana
derived from clays; those in Ghana originated from
clay shales and other aluminum-rich rocks; and those
in Thailand derived from clay alluvium Most bauxites
were formed between the middle Cretaceous and
middle Eocene times
Residual Manganese, Nickel, Phosphate, and Clays
Residual deposits of manganese form under condi-tions similar to those that produce residual iron Re-sidual manganese deposits are commonly derived from crystalline schists, limestones previously enriched with manganese minerals, or primary deposits of man-ganese minerals Important residual manman-ganese de-posits include those found in Brazil, Romania, Mo-rocco, Egypt, Ghana, India, Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines
Under tropical and subtropical conditions, some low-silica igneous rocks decompose to produce hy-drous silicates of nickel and magnesium Nickel lat-erite derived from serpentinized peridotite is found
in New Caledonia, Cuba, Brazil, and Venezuela In Florida, the leading phosphate-producing state, resid-ual concentrations of “land-pebble phosphate” occur Weathering and solution of phosphate-containing Mio-cene limestones left behind this loose, easily mined residue of calcium phosphate pebbles and boulders
In a humid, temperate climate, the chemical weathering of aluminum-bearing rocks produces clay Weathering does not proceed far enough to remove silica and produce a laterite, as in tropical regions; in-stead, the aluminum and silica combine to form hy-drous aluminum silicates—clay minerals Crystalline rocks that contain abundant feldspars and little iron, such as granite and gneiss, are the primary source rocks for clay formation High-grade residual clays oc-cur in the southern and western United States, En-gland, France, Germany, eastern Europe, and China
Other Residual Deposits Other products of residual concentration include trip-oli, an earthy material composed almost entirely of sil-ica and derived from weathered chert or silsil-ica-rich limestone; the residual kyanite deposits of India and the eastern United States; the residual barite deposits
of Missouri; the nodular zinc ores of Virginia and Ten-nessee; and the residual gold accumulations in the United States, Brazil, Madagascar, and Australia
Karen N Kähler
Further Reading
Chamley, Her vé Clay Sedimentology New York:
Springer, 1989
Evans, Anthony M Ore Geology and Industrial Minerals:
An Introduction 3d ed Boston: Blackwell Scientific,
1993
Trang 8Guilbert, John M., and Charles F Park, Jr The Geology of
Ore Deposits Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 2007.
Jensen, Mead L., and Alan M Bateman Economic
Min-eral Deposits 3d ed New York: Wiley, 1979.
McFarlane, M J Laterite and Landscape New York:
Aca-demic Press, 1976
Misra, Kula C Understanding Mineral Deposits Boston:
Kluwer Academic, 2000
Robb, Laurence Introduction to Ore-Forming Processes.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005
Valeton, Ida Bauxites New York: Elsevier, 1972.
See also: Aluminum; Clays; Iron; Manganese; Nickel;
Phosphate; Secondary enrichment of mineral
depos-its; Silicates; Weathering
Resource accounting
Category: Social, economic, and political issues
Resource accounting (RA), which is also called
envi-ronmental resource accounting or green accounting,
refers to accounting systems designed to revise or
sup-plement the conventional system of national accounts
(SNA), which is used by national governments and by
the United Nations The conventional system does not
consider resource depletion or environmental
degrada-tion.
Background
In traditional economics, the system of national
ac-counts (SNA) measures both a country’s output of
goods and services and the country’s income It is
used as an indicator of national economic activity and
economic performance However, the SNA does not
fully incorporate natural resources in measuring the
national product and does not take account of the
de-pletion of natural resources or the degradation of the
environment in measuring economic performance
Resource accounting (RA) revises or supplements
SNA calculations to correct these omissions
There is no standardized system of resource
ac-counting A wide variety of accounting systems have
been proposed by economists, depending in part on
the purposes to be served by the accounts and the
methods used for measuring the relevant variables
Some systems are designed to revise the conventional
SNA, but in most cases the authors propose
supple-ments to the SNA Resource accounting has been used for analyzing the conditions for sustainable de-velopment, for shaping national economic policies, and for measuring environmental and economic per-formance The United Nations and the World Bank have published analytical studies on RA, and national accounts using RA models have been prepared for a number of countries, including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Mexico In his April, 1993, Earth Day speech, President Bill Clinton called on the Bureau of Economic Analysis to produce “Green GDP [gross do-mestic product] measures that would incorporate changes in the natural environment into the calcula-tion of nacalcula-tional income and wealth.” The U.S Depart-ment of Commerce has published articles on RA and has prepared RA satellite accounts for use as supple-ments to the department’s SNA
RA Adjustments to SNA Resource accounting provides for the following types
of revisions of, or supplements to, the existing system
of national accounts estimates First, account can be taken of the changes in physical amounts of natural resources that result from human activities Natural resources are regarded as capital assets subject to de-pletion and degradation in a manner analogous to the depreciation of assets such as buildings and ma-chinery In the SNA, depreciation of manmade capi-tal is deducted from the GDP in calculating the net national product (NNP), but there is no deduction for depletion or degradation of natural resource capi-tal Supporters of RA argue that the failure to deduct natural resource depletion and degradation in calcu-lating net national product or national income is im-proper because output from natural resource deple-tion is no longer available for consumpdeple-tion after the resources are exhausted This concept is in accor-dance with the economic principle that true income cannot include capital consumption In RA case stud-ies, soil erosion, deforestation, and the depletion of mineral reserves are considered as major reductions
in the GDP Some models also include the deteriora-tion of water supplies and air polludeteriora-tion
Second, account can be taken of the final services provided by natural resources and the environment, such as aesthetic benefits from wilderness areas and biological diversity, both of which contribute to the quality of human life If these services are impaired by human production and consumption, national in-come and product accounts are adjusted for the
Trang 9duction of these services For example, when a dam
destroys the scenic value of a canyon, the reduction in
the amenities provided by the canyon is regarded as a
cost to be deducted from the output attributed to the
construction of the dam
Third, SNA expenditures for environmental
pro-tection, such as pollution abatement, can be regarded
as costs of production rather than being included in
national income The recycling of waste material and
the cleaning of waste dumps are also regarded as costs
of production
Analytical Problems
Full accounting by RA systems for the adjustments
listed above involves a number of analytical problems
For example, all RA systems adjust for mineral reserve
depletion, but economists do not agree on the proper
method of calculating depletion One simple method
is to multiply annual mineral output by the average
price of the mineral products and then deduct the
cost of labor and capital required for extraction and
exploration However, this method does not take into
consideration the net income produced by the
min-eral, since the entire output is attributed to depletion
A more accurate variation of this approach is to
esti-mate the reduction in the capital value of a mineral
between two periods during which extraction has
taken place The problem here is that capital values
can change because of a change in the price of the
mineral or the cost of producing it, or because of a
change in the volume of mineral reserves not related
to extraction
An alternative method, called the user-cost method,
divides annual revenue from the sale of the minerals
(after deducting extraction costs) into income and
depletion, with depletion determined as the amount
necessary to create a fund sufficient to yield an annual
amount equal to the income portion, beginning after
the mineral reserve is exhausted Both methods have
advantages and disadvantages, and both have been
used for calculating the net national products of
indi-vidual countries
Measuring Sustainable Growth
An important use of RA is to determine whether a
veloping country is following a path of sustainable
de-velopment or is depleting its natural resource
capi-tal—including its minerals, forests, and soil—under
conditions that threaten the economy’s ability to
main-tain its current level of consumption If a country
saves and invests in other industries an amount equal
to the value of the depletion of its natural resource capital, mineral exhaustion may not be accompanied
by a decline in economic growth RA also provides a more accurate measure of a country’s growth rate, be-cause without taking account of natural resource de-pletion and degradation, the growth rate measured
by SNA may overstate the rate that the country can sustain
Raymond F Mikesell
Further Reading Ahmad, Yusuf J., Salah El Serafy, and Ernst Lutz, eds
Environmental Accounting for Sustainable Develop-ment Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1989.
Bartelmus, Peter, and Eberhard K Seifert, eds Green
Accounting Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003.
Hecht, Joy E National Environmental Accounting:
Bridging the Gap Between Ecology and Economy
Wash-ington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 2005 Lange, Glenn-Marie “Environmental and Resource
Accounting.” In Handbook of Sustainable
Develop-ment, edited by Giles Atkinson, Simon Dietz, and
Eric Neumayer Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2007
Lutz, Ernst, ed Toward Improved Accounting for the
Envi-ronment Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993.
Mikesell, Raymond F Economic Development and the
En-vironment: A Comparison of Sustainable Development with Conventional Development Economics New York:
Mansell, 1992
Perrings, Charles, and Jeffrey R Vincent, eds Natural
Resource Accounting and Economic Development: The-ory and Practice Northhampton, Mass.: Edward
Elgar, 2003
Repetto, Robert, et al Wasting Assets: Natural Resources
in the National Income Accounts Washington, D.C.:
World Resources Institute, 1989
Rogers, Peter P “Natural Resource Accounting.” In
An Introduction to Sustainable Development, edited by
Stephen J Banta, David Sheniak, and Anita Feleo Cambridge, Mass.: Continuing Education Division, Harvard University, 2006
See also: Capitalism and resource exploitation; De-forestation; Developing countries; Ecosystem ser-vices; Energy economics; Environmental degradation, resource exploitation and; Health, resource exploita-tion and; Renewable and nonrenewable resources; United Nations Environment Programme
Trang 10Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act
Categories: Laws and conventions; government
and resources
Date: Passed October 21, 1976
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976
(RCRA) is a comprehensive U.S environmental law
that regulates nonhazardous solid waste and
hazard-ous waste It encourages recycling and reuse and
man-dates that hazardous waste be managed in an
envir-onmentally responsible manner from the time it is
generated until it is disposed of.
Background
After World War II, the United States experienced
rapid economic and industrial expansion With this
growth came a significant increase in the generation
and accumulation of wastes, both hazardous and
non-hazardous As waste management practices failed to
keep pace with waste production, much of the waste
entered the environment, where it posed a threat to
ecosystems and human health
In 1965, Congress passed the Solid Waste Disposal
Act (SWDA), which set safety standards for landfills
and established a framework for managing trash
posal Over the following decade, however, waste
dis-posal problems continued to mount The amount of
trash generated by individuals rose, as did the
quan-tity of toxic by-products produced by the manufacture
of synthetic chemicals A 1970 amendment, the
Re-source Recovery Act, sought to bring the problem
un-der control by setting national disposal criteria for
hazardous waste, establishing guidelines for sanitary
landfill and incineration facility operation, and
en-couraging programs for reclamation of materials and
energy from solid waste
By the mid-1970’s, it was clear that the waste
man-agement provisions of the amended SWDA remained
insufficient to meet the challenges posed by the
stag-gering quantities of solid and hazardous waste that
municipalities and industries across the nation were
generating Congress addressed SWDA’s deficiencies
with the October 21, 1976, passage of a more
compre-hensive amendment, known as RCRA
RCRA was so thorough an overhaul of SWDA that
amendments to SWDA passed after 1976 are generally
regarded as part of RCRA Among the more
signifi-cant of these amendments are the Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988 (MWTA), the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA), the Fed-eral Facilities Compliance Act of 1992 (FFCA), and the Land Disposal Program Flexibility Act of 1996 (LDPFA) MWTA followed highly publicized incidents
in 1987, in which syringes and other medical waste washed up on public beaches in the Northeast HSWA passed in response to public concern regarding haz-ardous waste disposal in substandard incinerators and landfills FFCA was enacted in the early post-Cold War years to require RCRA compliance from Department
of Defense and Department of Energy sites and other federal facilities that had previously claimed sovereign immunity from environmental regulations LDPFA, designed to eliminate regulatory redundancy and re-duce compliance costs associated with the disposal of certain low-risk wastes, was part of the Reinventing Environmental Regulation initiative, a commonsense legal-reform effort during Bill Clinton’s presidency
Provisions RCRA is a groundbreaking environmental law in that
it takes a “cradle-to-grave” approach to pollution con-trol It seeks not only to mitigate pollutant emissions but also to minimize how much pollution is gener-ated in the first place RCRA requires that, once gen-erated, hazardous wastes be managed, tracked, and ultimately disposed of, all in an environmentally re-sponsible manner RCRA encourages measures such as source reduction, recycling, and conservation of en-ergy and natural resources The act sets forth statutory and regulatory requirements and liability for owners and operators of facilities that fail to meet its require-ments The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (known prior to 2009 as the Office of Solid Waste) has primary responsibility for implementing RCRA RCRA provisions address three interrelated waste-management concerns: nonhazardous solid waste (Subtitle D), hazardous solid waste (Subtitle C), and underground storage tanks (Subtitle I) A fourth pro-gram focusing on medical-waste management, de-scribed in Subtitle J, is no longer in effect
Subtitle D of RCRA provides a regulatory frame-work for the nation’s solid-waste management It pro-hibits open dumping of solid wastes and establishes minimum standards for landfill location, operation (including daily cover requirements), design (includ-ing liners and leachate collection systems),