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Students explore the scientific foundations of sustainability relative to natural resources, environmental quality, and human health. Students normally examine underlying scientific knowledge about resource abundance, distribution, rates of increase and depletion, as well as the social arrangements by which we extract, exploit, exhaust, consume, or conserve natural resources and the material products into which they are converted. The study of sustainability is often grounded in systems theory, is interdisciplinary, and employs technical, scientific, historical, political, and economic modes of analysis. Students might apply the sustainability concept to natural resources individually such as agriculture, soils, food, forestry, fisheries, water, energy sources, wildlife, parks and protected areas, biological diversity, visual resources, or human health. Students may also consider how to manage conflicts over use or extraction rights from regions such as forests, parks, watersheds, grasslands, or marine reserves. Sustainability may also be studied as a philosophy, a survival instinct, or a social movement.