and a large amount of other rare metals. The country has one of the largest gold reserves in the world; mostly in Siberia and the Urals. Mercury deposits can be found in the central and southern Urals and in south-central Siberia. Raw materials are abundant as well, including potassium and magnesium salt deposits in the Kama River region of the western Urals. Russia also contains one of the world's largest deposits of apatite found in the central Kola Peninsula. Rock salt is located in the southwestern Urals and the southwest of Lake Baikal. Surface deposits of salt are found in salt lakes along the lower Volga Valley. Sulfur can be found in the Urals and the middle Volga Valley. Eight percent of the land is used for arable farming, four percent—for permanent pastures, forty-six percent of the land is forests and woodland, and forty-two percent is used for other purposes. A recent global remote sensing analysis suggested that there were 1,002 km² of tidal flats in Russia, making it the 33rd ranked country in terms of tidal flat area. Natural hazards Volcanic activity in the Kuril Islands and volcanoes and earthquakes on the Kamchatka Peninsula are other natural hazards. See also Geography of the Soviet Union Geology of Russia History of Russia List of Russian explorers Territorial evolution of Russia Notes References Further reading Blinnikov, Mikhail S. A geography of Russia and its neighbors (Guilford Press, 2011) Catchpole, Brian. A map history of Russia (1983) Chew, Allen F. An Atlas of Russian History: Eleven Centuries of Changing Borders (2nd ed. 1967) Gilbert, Martin. Routledge Atlas of Russian History (4th ed. 2007) excerpt and text search Henry, Laura A. Red to green: environmental activism in post-Soviet Russia (2010) Kaiser, Robert J. The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (1994). Medvedev, Andrei. Economic Geography of the Russian Federation (2000) Parker, William Henry. An historical geography of Russia (University of London Press, 1968) Shaw, Denis J.B. Russia in the modern world: A new geography (Blackwell, 1998) External links Great Russian landscape places (20 photo)