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15: Energy and Mineral Resources

  • Page ID
    32260
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    Learning Objectives
    • Describe how a renewable resource is different from a nonrenewable resource.
    • Compare the pros and cons of extracting and using fossil fuels and conventional and unconventional petroleum resources.
    • Describe how metallic minerals are formed and extracted.
    • Understand how society uses nonmetallic mineral resources.

    This text has previously discussed pioneers in the scientific study of geology like James Hutton and Charles Lyell, but the first real “geologists” were the hominids who picked up stones and began the stone age. Maybe stones were first used as curiosity pieces, maybe as weapons, but ultimately, they were used as tools. This was the Paleolithic Period, the beginning of the study of geology, and it dates back 2.6 million years to east Africa [1].

    The rock has a smooth side and a sharp side.
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): A Mode 1 Oldowan tool used for chopping. (By Locutus Borg; public domain via Wikimedia Commons.)

    In modern times, geologic knowledge is important for locating economically valuable materials for use in society. In fact, all items we use come from only three sources: they are farmed, they are hunted or fished, or they are mined. At the turn of the twentieth century, speculation was rampant that food supplies would not keep pace with world demand, suggesting the need to develop artificial fertilizers would [2]. Sources of fertilizer ingredients are: nitrogen which is processed from the atmosphere, using the Haber process for the manufacture of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen [3]; potassium which is from the hydrosphere, such as lakes or ocean evaporation; and phosphorus which is mined from the lithosphere, such as minerals like apatite from phosphorite rock found in Florida, North Carolina, Idaho, Utah, and around the world. Thus, without mining and processing of natural materials, modern civilization would not exist. Indeed, geologists are essential in this process of mining.

    • 15.1: Mining
      Mining is defined as the extraction, from the Earth, of valuable material for societal use. Usually, this includes solid materials (e.g. gold, iron, coal, diamond, sand, and gravel), but can also include fluid resources such as oil and natural gas. Modern mining has a long relationship with modern society. The oldest evidence of mining, with a concentrated area of digging into the Earth for materials, has a history that may go back 40,000 years to the hematite of the Lion Cave in Swaziland.
    • 15.2: Fossil Fuels
      Fossils fuels are extractable sources of stored energy created by ancient ecosystems. The natural resources that typically fall under this category are coal, oil (petroleum), and natural gas. This energy was originally formed via photosynthesis by living organisms such as plants, phytoplankton, algae, and cyanobacteria. Sometimes this is known as fossil solar energy since the energy of the sun in the past has been converted into the chemical energy within a fossil fuel.
    • 15.3: Mineral Resources
      Mineral resources, while principally nonrenewable, are generally placed in two main categories: metallic (containing metals) or nonmetallic (containing other useful materials). Most mining is focused on metallic minerals. A significant part of the advancement of human society has been developing the knowledge and technologies that yielded metal from the Earth and allowed the machines, buildings, and monetary systems that dominate our world today.
    • 15.S: Summary

    Thumbnail: View of the Utah Copper Company open-pit mine workings at Carr Fork, as seen from the railroad, Bingham Canyon, Utah/ (Public Domain; Andreas Feininger via Wikipedia)


    This page titled 15: Energy and Mineral Resources is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Chris Johnson, Matthew D. Affolter, Paul Inkenbrandt, & Cam Mosher (OpenGeology) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.