Texas Natural Resources

TEXAS NATURAL RESOURCES

A Report by Jillian Lewis

Texas lumber is used across the world for building and construction. In the beginning of the 20th century, lumber was the leading natural resource in Texas, as the most profitable. Replaced now by oil and other resources, lumber is still a highly valuable resource to Texans. In 1992, there was over 1.1 billion board feet of lumber produced.

Pine and hardwoods are used all across the U.S. and the rest of the world to produce flooring and furniture.

Houses are also created with the lumber produced in Texas. It is estimated that the total revenue from Texas lumber in 2007 was $30 billion. Lumber is currently the 7th largest industry in Texas.

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rocy composed mostly of carbon and hydrocarbons. It is the most abundant fossil fuel in the United States. Coal is a non-renewable energy source because it takes millions of years to create. The energy in coal comes from the energy stored by plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, when the Earth was partly covered with swampy forests. For millions of years, a layer of dead plants at the bottom of the swamps was covered by layers of water and dirt, trapping the energy of the dead plants. The heat and pressure from the top layers helped the plant remains turn into what we today call coal.

Coal is mainly found in 3 large regions, the Appalachian Coal Region, the Interior Coal Region, and the Western Coal Region. Texas is the largest coal producer in the Interior Coal Region, accounting for almost 1/3 of the region’s coal production. This region has mid-sized surface mines.

Coal is used to create almost half of all electricity generated in the U.S. Power plants burn coal to make steam. The steam turns turbines that generate electricity. Coal is also used by industries, in large amounts, to make steel, concrete and paper.

Cotton fabric is made from cotton fibers, which come from...