Natural Resources

Mineral Resources

Mineral resources are mined from concentrations that formed under suitable conditions by geologic processes

-Weathering, sedimentation, volcanism

Suitable conditions are rare, and may take millions of years to form a deposit

Intensive mining, depletion, declining production and dependence on imports can be applied on a local, regional or global scale to estimate the remaining lifetime of a mineral resource

Renewable and Nonrenewable Resources

Renewable resources can be replenished over relatively short time spans

-Examples include plants and animals for food, trees for lumber and paper, energy from the Sun and wind

Nonrenewable resources are deposits that take millions of years to form

-Examples include fossil fuels and metals

 Mineral Resources

Mineral resources are the endowment of useful minerals ultimately available commercially

Mineral resources include:

-Reserves—already identified deposits from which minerals can be extracted profitably

→An ore is a useful metallic mineral that can be mined for profit

Known deposits that are not economically or technologically recoverable

 Mineral Resources

98% of the continental crust is composed of only eight elements

-A deposit is valuable if the element is concentrated above the level of its average crustal abundance

The profitability of a deposit may change as demand changes