stock limited vs flow limited
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Nonrenewable resources are stock -limited. The entire stock is available at once, and can be extracted at any rate (limited mainly by extraction capital). But since the stock is not renewed, the faster the extraction rate, the shorter the lifetime of the resource. Renewable resources are flow limited. They can support extraction or harvest indefinitely, but only at a finite flow rate equal to their regeneration rate. If they are extracted faster than they regenerate, they may eventually be driven below a critical threshold and become, for all practical purposes, nonrenewable.
Link:: Thinking in systems