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A natural resource may exist as a separate entity such as freshwater, air, or any living organism such as a fish, or it may be transformed by extractivist industries into an economically useful form that must be processed to obtain the resource such as metal ores, rare-earth elements, petroleum, timber and most forms of energy.
Iron ore (banded iron formation) Manganese ore – psilomelane (size: 6.7 × 5.8 × 5.1 cm) Lead ore – galena and anglesite (size: 4.8 × 4.0 × 3.0 cm). Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process.
Earth materials are vital resources that provide the basic components for life, agriculture and industry. [1] [2] [3] Oceanic-continental convergence resulting in subduction and volcanic arcs illustrates one effect of plate tectonics. Cross-cutting relations can be used to determine the relative ages of rock strata and other geological structures.
Localized resources are found only in certain parts of the world (for example metal ores and geothermal power). Actual vs. potential natural resources are distinguished as follows: Actual resources are those resources whose location and quantity are known and we have the technology to exploit and use them.
This glossary of geography terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in geography and related fields, including Earth science, oceanography, cartography, and human geography, as well as those describing spatial dimension, topographical features, natural resources, and the collection, analysis, and visualization of geographic ...
Earth minerals and metal ores are examples of non-renewable resources. The metals themselves are present in vast amounts in Earth's crust, and their extraction by humans only occurs where they are concentrated by natural geological processes (such as heat, pressure, organic activity, weathering and other processes) enough to become economically viable to extract.
The result is that metal mining activities are expanding, and more and more of the world's metal stocks are above ground in use rather than below ground as unused reserves. An example is the in-use stock of copper .
Elemental iron is virtually absent on the Earth's surface except as iron-nickel alloys from meteorites and very rare forms of deep mantle xenoliths.Although iron is the fourth most abundant element in Earth's crust, composing about 5% by weight, [4] the vast majority is bound in silicate or, more rarely, carbonate minerals, and smelting pure iron from these minerals would require a prohibitive ...