What affects the formation and distribution of natural resources

A lot of things:

Weather: This affects the formation and distribution of plants and animals, for example in a dessert you hardly will find wood, while in a tropical area or in the forest you can find lots of trees and wood.

Temperature and Pressure: usually things change of state at higher temperatures and pressures, so most of the minerals we know and use today will be more likely found in places that suffered by a lot of temperature/pressure changes, maybe near volcanos or mountains.

geographic disposition: Of course this is related to the previous two things, but more specific different types of geographic distributions may allow different natural resources to be found, like water tables and specific minerals/types of wood, etc.

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