Encyclopedia of Global Resources part 140 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. . | 1296 Vermiculite Global Resources mina is smelted by subjecting it to electrolytic reduction in a molten bath of natural or synthetic cryolite to produce aluminum metal. In 2008 six companies operated fourteen primary aluminum smelters. The smelting required a huge amount of electricity which hydroelectric dams produced relatively cheaply. The operation of those smelters placed Venezuela fifteenth in production of aluminum behind Mozambique but ahead of Tajikistan. In the same year the country accounted for percent of the world s bauxite and percent of aluminum output. Venezuela consistently ranks in the top twenty-five exporters of aluminum. The main importers of Venezuelan aluminum are the United States Mexico Japan the Netherlands and Colombia in descending order. Other Resources Venezuela also is a producer of other mineral commodities although none holds more than minor ranking in global exports. These minerals are sulfur 6 percent feldspar 2 percent and silica sand 1 percent . Miscellaneous commodities ranking less than 1 percent include coal lead zinc copper nickel gold titanium diamonds and uranium. Most of these commodities come from mining activities in the Andes Mountains or Guiana Highlands. Richard A. Crooker Further Reading Arnold Guy. The Resources of the Third World. Chicago Taylor and Francis 1997. Crooker Richard A. Venezuela. Philadelphia Chelsea House 2006. Kogel Jessica Elzea et al. eds. Industrial Minerals and Hocks Commodities Markets and Uses. 7th ed. Littleton Colo. . Society for Mining Metallurgy and Exploration 2006. Kozloff Nikolas. Hugo Chavez Oil Politics and the Challenge to the United States. New York Palgrave Macmillan 2006. Salazar-Carrillo Jorge and Bernadette West. Oil and Development in VenezuelaDuringthe Twentieth Century. Westport Conn. Praeger 2004. Web Sites Central Intelligence Agency The World Fact Book https library publications the- world-factbook Energy Information Administration .
