Shanghai Edition Junior High Science, Grade 9, Semester 2: Earth's Gifts and the Red Line – Patterns in Natural Resource Distribution

Natural resources (natural resources) are humanity's foundational gifts from Earth—material, energy, and environmental basis for human civilization. Yet these gifts are not evenly distributed; their distribution is strictly constrained bygeological mineralization patternsandhydrothermal climate conditions, resulting in pronounced geographical unevenness.

1. Multidimensional Evolution and Classification of Resources

Natural resources can be classified by renewability intorenewable resourcesandnon-renewable resources. Based on human utilization, they can be categorized as:

Land already in use: arable land, forests, grasslands, and industrial, mining, transportation, and construction land.
Developable resources: land with development potential—suitable for farming, forestry, grazing, and tidal flats.
Difficult-to-use land: deserts, arid lands, and high-altitude mountainous regions restricted by extreme cold or drought.

2. Scientific Drivers Behind Distribution Patterns

Land resourcesandForest resourcesare directly controlled by climate (water-heat combinations) and topography. For instance, forests transition from the equator to the poles in a predictable pattern:Tropical broadleaf forests → Subtropical evergreen broadleaf forests → Temperate deciduous broadleaf forests → Coniferous forestsin a regular succession. Meanwhile,mineral resourcesare products of geological processes over time, exhibiting fixed mineralization zones.

3. Environmental Carrying Capacity and the Red Line

Asnatural population growth rateincreases due to improvements in healthcare and food supply, demand for resources has surged.Environmental carrying capacityrefers to the maximum population size a region can sustain while maintaining quality of life. When consumption exceeds resource renewal rates or environmental self-purification capacity, an 'ecological deficit' is triggered, undermining the foundation of civilizational development.

QUESTION 1

Review relevant sources and summarize the types and characteristics of forest resources.

Includes only tropical broadleaf and coniferous forests, primarily valued for timber production.

Encompasses trees and ecological factors across tropical, subtropical, temperate, and cold zones, offering dual functions of ecological regulation and resource production.

Primarily refers to planted forests, excluding wildlife and plants beneath the canopy.

Found only in tropical rainy regions, dominated by evergreen species.

QUESTION 2

What type of land use does each feature in the landscape image (Fig. 7-1-1)—paddy fields, deserts, mountain pastures, and urban development—represent?

All belong to developed arable wasteland.

Paddy fields are agricultural land, deserts are currently unusable land, pastures are grasslands, and cities are industrial, mining, and construction land.

Urban development falls under renewable resource use.

QUESTION 3

Arable land accounts for only about 10% of global land resources and is unevenly distributed—what is the main reason?

Humans deliberately protect forests and avoid cultivation.

Strictly limited by climate, terrain, and water availability, mainly concentrated in subtropical and temperate plains.

Most of the world’s land is already occupied by mineral resources.

QUESTION 4

What are the main types of renewable energy currently being utilized by humans, and what is their outlook?

Primarily coal and oil, with promising application prospects.

Including solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal energy. With technological progress, they are essential solutions to alleviate resource crises.

Currently only nuclear energy exists, with a dim future due to safety concerns.

QUESTION 5

Which of the following correctly describes the five-zone distribution of China’s water abundance and scarcity?

Evenly distributed nationwide with no significant differences.

The abundant water zone lies along the southeast coast; the water-scarce and low-water zones are mainly located in inland northwest China and the northwestern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The northeastern region belongs to the waterless zone.