I have a workflow question

I have been regularly saving my scene, but today when I attempted to close the editor, I was prompted to save all of my textures and materials on foliage and static meshes. I have not altered them and did not bake lighting. Why is the engine asking me to save my textures?

On a previous occasion, I did save when prompted, and (I assume) it led to many assets loading with missing textures the next time I opened the scene. Could someone explain to me what’s going on? I feel like I am missing some basic knowledge here as to how the engine works. Thank you.