Natural Resources
Latvia cannot claim valuable natural resources. Nevertheless, the abundant presence of such materials as limestone for cement (6 billion cubic meters or 8 billion cubic yards), gypsum (165 million cubic meters or 216 million cubic yards) high-quality clay (375 million cubic meters or 490 million cubic yards), dolomite (615 million cubic meters or 804 million cubic yards), peat (480 million tonnes, 530 million short tons or 470 million long tons), and construction materials, including gravel and sand, satisfy local needs. Fish from the Baltic Sea is another potential export resource. Amber, million-year-old chunks of petrified pine pitch, is often found on the beaches of the Baltic Sea and is in high demand for jewelry. It has also had a symbolic impact on the country, which is often called Dzintarzeme, or Amberland. The future may hold potentially more valuable resources if oil fields are discovered in Latvian territorial waters, as some geologists have predicted.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Latvia
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or resources:
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has—the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge—infinitely precious, time- resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)