All elements and conditions, as well as phenomena and bodies of nature, can be used in public production to meet the material, cultural, and scientific needs of society and constitute its raw material and energy base, which are called natural resources.
All human life and activity, territorial settlement, and placement of productive forces depend on the quantity, quality, and location of natural resources.
What is the availability of the most important of them, and how long will they last? It is impossible to answer this question accurately and unequivocally.
All attempts to make such forecasts have mostly ended in failure. According to some calculations made in the mid-20th century, by the end of it, reserves of such essential minerals as lead, zinc, tin, fluorine, etc., were supposed to be exhausted. As we can see, this did not happen, so let us hope that the forecasts predicting the complete exhaustion of all metal reserves by 2500 are also erroneous. However, in any case, these reserves are limited and require reasonable management.
The classification of natural resources presents great theoretical and practical interest, allowing for the assessment of the scale of their reserves, the possibility of use, and a set of necessary measures for their protection and rational use.
Natural resources are classified according to the following criteria:
• By their use: production (agricultural and industrial), recreational, aesthetic, scientific, etc.;
• By belonging to certain components of nature: land, water, mineral, animal and plant worlds, etc.;
• By substitutability: substitutable (for example, fuel and energy resources can be replaced by wind or solar energy) and non-substitutable (oxygen - air for breathing or fresh water for drinking cannot be replaced).
Natural resources are conventionally divided into exhaustible and inexhaustible based on their nature of use. (D.L. Armand, 1966, A.M. Ryabchikov et al. 1979, 1986). Exhaustible resources are those that are completely consumed and depleted during use. They include the overwhelming majority of minerals, mining materials, and minerals formed in the geological history of the Earth.
Exhaustible resources are divided into:
• Non-renewable, formed in the Earth's crust over very distant periods of many millions of years; ore and non-ore minerals; the protection of these resources comes down to economical consumption and exploration of new reserves. Moreover, economical consumption implies not a reduction in extraction but its rationalization - preventing losses during extraction, transportation, and processing.
• Renewable - these are substances and forces created on Earth thanks to the current flow of solar energy: heat, atmospheric moisture, precipitation, and all fresh waters, hydroenergy, energy of winds, waves, and currents, as well as some minerals, and all living organisms of the ecosystem. Finally, humans themselves are the most important resource of the biosphere. All of them turn out to be practically exhaustible if the rate of their extraction exceeds the rate of renewal.
Regarding renewables, they are capable of reproduction at rates lagging behind consumption rates. These resources include soil, vegetation, wildlife, as well as some mineral resources, for example, salts that precipitate on the bottoms of lakes and marine lagoons. They can be reproduced through natural processes and maintained in a certain constant quantity, determined by the level of their annual reproduction and consumption.
Inexhaustible resources are predominantly external processes and phenomena relative to the Earth, such as solar energy and its derivatives, wind energy, energy of moving water, energy from the Earth's depths. Atmospheric air and water, etc., can be conditionally attributed to these resources. In quantitative terms, these elements of the environment are practically inexhaustible.
Recreational resources. Recreational resources are considered to be territories that serve as places for mass recreation of the population. In geography, they refer to activities often called tourism and recreation, which include various services for tourists and vacationers. Recreational resources can be natural (sections of the sea coast, riverbanks, lakes, forests, mountainous areas, etc.) and anthropogenic (for example, historical and architectural landmarks of cities). They are differentiated into resort, health, tourist, sports, and excursion resources.
Mineral resources. Mineral or fossil resources are natural formations of the Earth's crust of organic or inorganic origin, used in the field of material production.
Deposits of useful minerals form fields, including industrial ones, which represent economic interest due to their technical and economic indicators. By their physical properties, they are divided into solid, liquid, and gaseous. The most widespread classification of useful minerals is based on their use:
• Fuel and energy / oil, natural gas, coal, uranium ores, combustible shales, peat, etc.;
• Ore / ores of ferrous and non-ferrous, rare and precious metals;
• Chemical raw materials / phosphorites, apatites, potassium and other salts, sulfur, etc.;
• Natural building materials and non-ore useful minerals / limestones, ornamental, technical and precious stones, mineral waters, etc.
Reserves of useful minerals are determined as a result of geological surveys.
Biological resources. Biological resources refer to biological objects (species, populations, communities) included in human economic activity as labor objects and means of production.
Among biological resources, based on types of economic use, forest, pasture, hunting, fish resources, medicinal plant resources, etc., are distinguished. The territories where a particular resource is reproduced are called habitats. For example, natural forage lands are places where forage plants grow, while hunting grounds refer to the habitats of game fauna, etc.
