These lab questions must be answered and handed in to me in
class on the THIRD WEEK (
.
LAB ASSIGNMENT: Undergraduate students
Write
brief but explanatory answers to the questions below. Bring your answers to
class next week:
1. a) Pick 2 items you are familiar with (an item of clothing,
furniture, food or drink or anything you own and like very well. List the
natural resources that were probably used to make the two things you listed.
Group the items into renewable and non-renewable resources?
b)
Assuming the all the resources used in producing each item, including labor
cost 100 units of a given money. State the portion of the production price of
the materials (100 units) that is due to the cost of the raw natural resources
used to make them, and the portion of the production cost that is attributable
to human labor which transformed the resources into the object you own? (5 marks).
2. a) Explain “resource
scarcity”? b) Briefly explain the types
and conditions that create and sustain each type of resource scarcity (3 marks).
3. a) Briefly define the term
“Resource Management” and b) explain
what Resource Managers attempt to achieve in managing natural resources.
4. Many of
the problems we encounter in resource management stem from conflicts that
develop between different goals and perspectives that may grouped under ecological, economical and ethnological factors.
Give examples of goals of resource management under each of these factors and
explain why and how conflicts often develop between these goals (one page minimum).
LAB ASSIGNMENT: Graduate Students
Write
brief but explanatory answers to the questions below. Bring your answers to
class next week:
1. On one hand,
natural resources can be perceived as “benefits” that can be drawn on such
as stocks of natural substances as coal and iron deposits, food etc. found in
nature or the environment. Zimmerman (1951) on the other hand takes a
human-centered view of resources and sees natural resources as resulting
from human appraisal of the environment. He stated that the term “natural
resource” does not refer to a substance or a thing in nature but rather the
function which the thing may perform for people. A) Explain the two views of
natural resources and describe the implication each view of natural resources
has for (i) the availability of natural resources to
people and (ii) the conservation of environmental resources? (one page minimum).
2. A) Explain the term “resource scarcity” and B) Explain
why real or perceived scarcity of resources may be good and bad as well for
human welfare (one page minimum).
3. A)
Explain the basic approaches a Geographer may adopt to study issues in resource
management. B) Explain specific examples of studies in resource management that
might be carried out under each of the approaches described above (any length).