Renewable resources do not mean that they are inexhaustible resources. The truth is that all renewable resources are limited by the capacity of natural system to renew them. Good soil is renewable only if protected from erosions.
Likewise good soil is renewable only if protected from erosion and ground water is only renewable when water continues to percolate in the soil at a rate at which it is removed.
It should be known that replenishment resources are dependent upon non-renewable resources for their replenishment e.g. production of agricultural crops (renewable resources) depends on iron, copper and other metals as well as phosphate and other fertilizer components (non-renewable resources).
Limitations of Renewable Resources :
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The biotic resources developed as a result of photosynthetic activity of green plants are renewable in nature. But its productivity is limited by availability of water nutrients and environmental conditions. Although enormous quantity of water is present in our planet for fresh water life depends on precipitation which too is an available infinite quantity annually,
Limitations of Non-renewable Resources :
Minerals – deposits of fossil fuels are nonrenewable in nature. Once they are depleted there is no way to reform them. The continued over exploitation shall exhaust many of our valuable deposits which took millions of years to form. It is very difficult to get them may finish sometime within the human scale of time.
Conservation of Natural Resources :
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With the technological developments and expanding human population man started utilizing natural resources at much larger scale which led to increasing demand for resources. Thus the non-renewable resources may finish after some time.
Conservation is defined as the management for benefit of life including human kind of the biosphere so that it may yield sustainable benefit to the present generation while maintaining its potential to meet the needs of the future generations.
This means that conservation is one of the most significant applications of ecology. Conservation has (1) to ensure the preservation of a quality environment and (2) to ensure a continuous, yield of useful plants, animals and materials.