Resources of the Earth: Origin, Use, and Environmental Impact - Hardcover

Extensively illustrated and up-to-date, this book explores the nature and critical issues of all major types of earth resources - energy, metallic, nonmetallic, water and soil - and the impacts that resource usage has on the earth environment. It provides geologic background of resource formation and occurrence of most of the various types of resources; offers an international perspective; discusses resources not only from the scientific point of view, but also from the point of economic, political, historical considerations; and considers how the extraction and use of the resources creates impacts - local or global, immediate or delayed, visible or invisible and singular or cumulative.