Unit 2: The Earth and Mineral Resources Introduction and awareness

Although an integral part of human development minerals are only one resource amongst many that planet earth has to offer. The purpose of this unit is to provide an understanding of the importance of mineral resources and associated environmental issues. Minerals and their industrial uses are reviewed as are the environmental impacts of extraction. Fossil fuels reserves and the implications of finite resources are discussed and a case study on aluminium is presented.

Parys Copper Mine, Parys mountain, Anglesey, North Wales

Resource

To maintain human life on earth, we depend on a steady flow of energy and materials to meet our needs. Some of the energy we use is renewable (hydroelectric power, windpower, solar heating systems, etc.) but most comes from limited (depletable) fossil fuels. The minerals we extract from the earth's crust, such as copper, iron, and aluminium, are also limited. The future of our life to a large extent depends on the availability of abundant supplies of inexpensive, depletable energy and materials. These minerals valued and utilised by man are renewable over geological time, i.e. millions of years, for our purposes they are therefore finite and non-renewable. It is this issue of finite resource, which tends to gain the greatest publicityand interest, but first, exactly what resources are we talking about and where are they used?