These three natural resources and resource depletion data graphing activities will help your students understand how human resource use affects availability, how consumption compares with production and new discoveries, and how growing demand for copper and lithium is connected to mining and sustainability—all while building strong graphing and data-analysis skills. This bundle gives teachers an easy, NO PREP way to have students work with real-world datasets while exploring Resource Depletion Over Time, Global Copper Demand, and Lithium Mining & Electric Vehicles.

There are 3 Graphing Labs Included:

1. Global Copper Demand Data Investigation
2. Lithium Mining & Electric Vehicles Data Investigation
3. Resource Depletion Over Time Graphing Investigation

Students analyze real-world datasets related to oil discoveries and consumption, groundwater loss during droughts, mineral reserves and production, global copper use, copper mine production, lithium consumption, electric-car sales, lithium production, and process-water demand at lithium brine locations. They then create a variety of graph types from data tables before using their graphs to identify patterns, analyze relationships, and explain how human demand affects natural resources.

Each activity includes a complete answer key with the required graphs and is very easy to differentiate for different ability levels.

Students use provided real-world data tables to:

• Create multiple types of graphs, including line graphs, double line graphs, bar graphs, and scatter plots
• Compare global oil consumption with new conventional oil discoveries
• Analyze groundwater-loss rates during major drought periods
• Interpret mineral reserve-to-production ratios
• Examine how global copper use is distributed across economic sectors
• Analyze changes in global copper mine production over time
• Investigate the relationship between national copper reserves and mine production
• Examine changes in global lithium consumption
• Analyze the relationship between electric-car sales and lithium mine production
• Compare process-water demand among lithium brine locations
• Use evidence from graphs to answer questions about resource availability, depletion, mining, and sustainability

Each activity moves students from reading data → graphing data → interpreting patterns → explaining scientific processes.

Topics Students Explore

• Global oil discoveries and consumption
• Groundwater loss during major droughts
• Mineral reserves and production ratios
• How human use contributes to resource depletion
• Global copper consumption by sector
• Trends in global copper mine production
• Copper reserves and production relationships
• Why reserves do not provide exact depletion timelines
• Global lithium consumption over time
• Electric-car sales and lithium mine production
• Water use at lithium brine locations
• Sustainable management of oil, groundwater, copper, and lithium resources

This graphing bundle is also included inside my Middle School Science Graphing & Data Analysis Mega Bundle at a significant discount. The bundle contains graphing activities for all 6th, 7th, and 8th grade science topics.

What’s Included

✅ Three natural resources and resource depletion graphing investigations

✅ Real-world style data tables for each activity

✅ Multiple graphing tasks in every investigation

✅ Data analysis discussion questions

✅ Complete answer keys

✅ Extension activities

✅ Rubrics for each investigation

Perfect for:

• Mineral resources and mining lessons
• Groundwater and freshwater-resource units
• Copper and lithium resource lessons
• Energy-resource activities
• Data-analysis practice
• Graphing skill development
• Small-group collaboration
• Sub plans or review days
• Cross-curricular math connections
• NGSS Earth and human activity connections

Teacher-Friendly Features

• Uses real-world natural-resource, mining, production, consumption, and water-use data
• Promotes critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning
• Builds graphing and data-literacy skills
• Connects resource use with environmental sustainability
• Supports NGSS Science & Engineering Practices
• Easy to implement with no prep
• Flexible for middle and high school classrooms