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Natural resources are commodities that are considered
valuable in their relatively unmodified (natural) form. A commodity is generally
considered a natural resource when the primary activities associated with it are extraction and purification, as opposed to
creation. Thus, mining, oil extraction, fishing, and forestry are generally considered
natural-resource industries, while farming is not.
Natural resources are often classified into renewable and non-renewable resources. Renewable resources are generally living
resources (fish, coffee, and forests, for example), which can restock (renew)
themselves at approximately the rate at which they are extracted, if they are not overharvested. Non-living renewable natural
resources include water, wind, tides and solar radiation — compare with renewable energy.
Mineral resources are generally non-renewable and, once a site's non-renewable resource is exhausted, it is considered to be
useless for future extraction, barring technological improvements that allow economic extraction from the tailings.
Both extraction of the basic resource and refining it into a purer, directly
usable form, (e.g., metals, refined oils) are generally considered natural-resource
activities, even though the latter may not necessarily occur near the former.
See also: fish, wood, metal, minerals, List of minerals, petroleum, mining, refining, prospecting, environment, land
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