Encyclopedia of Global Resources part 60 provides a wide variety of perspectives on both traditional and more recent views of Earth's resources. It serves as a bridge connecting the domains of resource exploitation, environmentalism, geology, and biology, and it explains their interrelationships in terms that students and other nonspecialists can understand. The articles in this set are extremely diverse, with articles covering soil, fisheries, forests, aluminum, the Industrial Revolution, the . Department of the Interior, the hydrologic cycle, glass, and placer mineral deposits. . | 538 Greece Global Resources . Geological Survey Grassland Ecosystems http science term 499 See also Agriculture industry Desertification Dust Bowl Farmland Overgrazing Rangeland Soil management. Gravel. See Sand and gravel Greece Categories Countries government and resources Greece leads the world in the production of perlite and leads Europe in the production of bauxite and bentonite. It also produces important quantities of magnesite and nickel. Greece exports about one-half of its extracted minerals but its substantial production of lignite is consumed internally. The country has few reser ves of petroleum and it must import most of its oil and natural gas. The Country Greece is a small mountainous country occupying the southern portion of the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe. It has a deeply indented coastline and its more than 1 400 islands and islets make up about one-fifth of its area. Once very weak Greece s economy has expanded considerably since the middle of the twentieth centur y thanks in large part to economic aid from other countries trade with the rest of Europe and the Middle East and a steadily increasing influx of tourists. The rapid industrialization that the country has experienced since the 1970 s has encouraged a shift of population from rural areas to cities and has created serious air and water pollution. In 2008 Greece had an estimated gross domestic product GDP in purchasing power parity of billion making it the thirty-third or thirty-fourth largest economy in the world and the eleventh largest in Europe. Greece joined the European Union EU in 1981 and in 2008 its per capita GDP was estimated to be thirty-two thousand dollars which was fourteen hundred dollars below the average of the European Union. Manufacturing accounts for approximately one-fifth of its GDP with ser vice industries accounting for most of the remainder. The value of the country s exports is only about one-third of the value of .
