Mining
Mountains
Mountaintop coal mining is a major cause of land cover changes in the central Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. The landscape disturbance mountaintop mining causes is different from others (such as forestry, urbanization, or agriculture) in that it can extend deeply into the ground, disturbing even the bedrock. Landsat imagery from the 1970s has catalogued the changes.
These false color images show the natural landscape of the area: forested mountains are bright green, and numerous streams and valleys give the land a wrinkled appearance. Mining areas are pink, and reclaimed mining land is usually light green.
The reason for the large-scale change caused by this type of mining is that one ton of coal is extracted for every 16 tons of terrain displaced. In the mountainous Appalachian landscape, the displaced material ends up in river valleys. More than just the look of the landscape changes—the drainage network itself is altered.
First mined in the 19th century, low-sulfur Appalachian coal can be extracted relatively cost-effectively by the mountaintop removal process. This method allows almost all of the coal in a seam to be removed. Understanding the hydrologic changes brought on by this mining practice is key to the future of the communities in the region.
Location
July 1, 1975, Landsat 1 (path/row 19/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
June 19, 1986, Landsat 5 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
Aug. 27, 1988, Landsat 5 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
Sept. 21, 1991, Landsat 5 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
Aug. 31, 1995, Landsat 5 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
Aug. 18, 1999, Landsat 7 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
June 2, 2003, Landsat 5 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
July 17, 2008, Landsat 5 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
July 23, 2016, Landsat 8 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
Sept. 7, 2021, Landsat 8 (path/row 18/34) — Mountaintop mining, West Virginia, USA
Mountaintop Mining, West Virginia, USA Additional Imagery & Stories
Hydrology
The effects on the hydrology in the region where mountaintop mining takes place is not well understood—how does this mining activity affect the moveme...
Mining Operations
Appalachian coal lies underground in thin seams, too thin for underground mine shafts. The only way to extract the coal profitably is with surface min...
Reclamation
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 requires that mined lands be restored to an acceptable land cover. These images show some of th...
References
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PBS, 2017, How mountaintop mining affects life and landscape in West Virginia: PBS News Hour, accessed November 6, 2017, at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mountaintop-mining-affects-life-landscape-west-virginia.
Pond, G.J., Passmore, M.E., Borsuk, F.A., Reynolds, L., and Rose, C.J., 2008, Downstream effects of mountaintop coal mining—comparing biological conditions using family- and genus-level macroinvertebrate bioassessment tools: Freshwater Science, v. 27, no. 3, p. 717–737, at https://doi.org/10.1899/08-015.1.
Zegre, N.P., Miller, A.J., Maxwell, A., and Lamont, S.J., 2014, Multiscale Analysis of Hydrology in a Mountaintop Mine-Impacted Watershed: Journal of the American Water Resources Association, v. 50, no. 5, p. 1257–1272, at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jawr.12184/full.