ABSTRACT
Land development and natural resource management are so strongly related that they can hardly be treated separately. Geology is closely related to land development because of regional planning and the management of subsurface resources. Soil fertility depends primarily on geological and climatic factors. The wide variety of soil substrates in the world shows the extent to which soil fertility varies, even within the same climate. Geology provides methods for discovering new aquifers, learning how they function, and determining the age of the water, their rate of renewal, and their vulnerability. A global policy of ending hunger will necessarily become a world policy on water resources. A new source of stress is developing in the area of food production: biofuels. Large quantities of hydrocarbons may remain trapped in source rocks. In reality, production from these unconventional hydrocarbon deposits is bumping up against an increasingly strong desire to stop consuming geologic carbon–coal because of climate change.
