While the hard ground - because of the underlying sand drying quickly - allows the ball to travel further from the tee, the ground off the fairway is far less forgiving.

BBC: Carnoustie

The game is played with 49 glass or ceramic marbles grouped together on a 2m-diameter concrete cylinder raised 7cm off the ground and covered in sand.

BBC: Knuckle down at England��s World Marble Championships

In the spring, tourists come from all over the world to see the natural wonders: crystalline salt popping out of the ground, sand dunes surrounded by mountains, vibrantly colored, unearthly-looking rock formations and, if there's been enough rain, blooming wildflowers.

NPR: Students Blossom in the Desert

This part of Texas is in the core of the Eagle Ford s hale, currently the most profitable oil and gas field in the U.S. The people around here understand that the fracking of this shale, the injection of billions of gallons of sand-and-chemical-laden water, takes place 2 miles beneath the ground.

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It extracts oil from the ground using a method called fracking - pumping down a mixture of sand, water and chemicals at high pressure.

BBC: US to become 'world's biggest oil producer'

"This is black sand, " said ten-year tour veteran and Illinois farmer Byron Jones approvingly, toeing the ground of an Indiana field.

FORBES: Magazine Article