The conditions of deserts make them rich in a few non-renewable mineral resources and oil.
Water-soluble salts, which readily accumulate in desert deposits due to the ambient dryness, such as gypsum, borates, table salt, and sodium and potassium nitrates, have been historically a product of deserts. Several minerals, highly significant in the global economy, are mined in deserts, where they occur not because of current aridity but rather due to geological history.
More than for their mineral exports, deserts are renowned for the provision of biologically-derived but non-renewable energy resources, which dramatically boost the political standing and the per capita GDP of several desert countries.
Thus, deserts contribute slightly above 50 per cent of world oil production and contain 75 per cent of i ts reserves, while 28 per cent of the world's natural gas reserves are found in the West Asia, North Africa and Central Asia (IEA 2005).
See UNEP.org's Economic Exports From Deserts for more info.
The desert biome is an ecosystem that forms due to the low level of rainfall it receives each year. Deserts cover about 20% of the Earth.
There are four major types of desert in this biome - hot and dry, semiarid, coastal, and cold. They are all able to inhabit plant and animal life that are able to survive there.
To know more about this biome, see SoftSchools.com's Desert Biome Facts.