No matter where you live, you and all living things use land for living space. Living space includes natural habitats, as well as the land on which buildings, sidewalks, parking lots, and streets are built.
People also use soil for growing crops and forests to harvest wood for making furniture, houses, and paper products. They mine minerals from the land, sometimes removing entire mountaintops, as shown to the right. In each of these cases, people use land to meet their needs.