The Exact Details of Mountain Top Coal Mining With NASA Satelite Imagery.
Joseph Raglione
March 17, 2010
Gentle readers within this American Chronicle, Canada and the United States are both guilty of creating the most devastating and polluting man made environmental disasters in history. Canada with its Tar Sands project and the U.S. with its mountain top Coal mining project. Both are large enough projects to photograph from Satelites miles above the Earth. The following is how mountain top Coal mining has progressed over the years, if you can call it progress! To see the images, visit the Earth Observatory web site here...> http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/dubai.php?src=eoa-ann
Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia´s Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large—sometimes very large—surface mines. This time-series of images of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia, illustrates why this controversial mining method is also called "mountaintop removal."
Based on data from NASA´s Landsat 5 satellite, these natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine as it moves from ridge to ridge between 1984 to 2009. The natural landscape of the area is dark green forested mountains, creased by streams and indented by hollows. The active mining areas appear off-white, while areas being reclaimed with vegetation appear light green. A pipeline roughly bisects the images from north to south. The town of Madison, lower right, lies along the banks of the Coal River.
In 1984, the mining operation is limited to a relatively small area west of the Coal River. The mine first expands along mountaintops to the southwest, tracing an oak-leaf-shaped outline around the hollows of Big Horse Creek and continuing in an unbroken line across the ridges to the southwest. Between 1991 and 1992, the mine moves north, and the impact of one of the most controversial aspects of mountaintop mining—rock and earth dams called valley fills—becomes evident.
The law requires coal operators to try to restore the land to its approximate original shape, but the rock debris generally can´t be securely piled as high or graded as steeply as the original mountaintop. There is always too much rock left over, and coal companies dispose of it by building valley fills in hollows, gullies, and streams. Between 1991 and 1992, this leveling and filling in of the topography becomes noticeable as the mine expands northward across a stream valley called Stanley Fork (image center).
The most dramatic valley fill that appears in the series, however, is what appears to be the near-complete filling of Connelly Branch from its source to its mouth at the Mud River between 1996 and 2000. Since 2004, the mine has expanded from the Connelly Branch area to the mountaintops north of the Mud River. Significant changes are apparent to the ridges and valleys feeding into Berry Branch by 2009. Over the 25-year period, the disturbed area grew to more than 10,000 acres (15.6 square miles).
According to a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 40 percent of the year-round and seasonal streams in the Mud River watershed upstream of and including Connelly Branch had been filled or approved for filling through 1998. In 2009, the EPA intervened in the approval of a permit to further expand the Hobet mine into the Berry Branch area and worked with mine operators to minimize the disturbance and to reduce the number and size of valley fills.
Still, some scientists argue that current regulations and mitigation strategies are inadequate. In February, a team of scientists published a review of research on mountaintop mining and valley fills in the magazine Science. The scientists concluded that the impacts on stream and groundwater quality, biodiversity, and forest productivity were "pervasive and irreversible" and that current strategies for mitigation and restoration were not compensating for the degradation.
References
Palmer, M. A., Bernhardt, E. S., Schlesinger, W. H., Eshleman, K. N., Foufoula-Georgiou, E., Hendryx, M. S., et al. (2010). Mountaintop Mining Consequences. Science, 327(5962), 148-149.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2009, September 11). EPA Releases Preliminary Results for Surface Coal Mining Permit Reviews. EPA.gov. Retrieved March 2, 2010.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (1998). Permitted Stream Losses Due to Valley FIlling in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia: A Partial Inventory. Pennsylvania Ecological Services Field Office, State College, PA.
Links
More mine images on the Earth Observatory
Coal Controversy in Appalachia
Next Page: Yellow River Delta1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 World of Change
Mountaintop Mining, West Virginia
Yellow River Delta
Drought Cycles in Australia
El Niño, La Niña, and Rainfall
Severe Storms
Evaporation of the Aral Sea
Burn Recovery in Yellowstone
Global Biosphere
Antarctic Ozone Hole
Amazon Deforestation
Antarctic Sea Ice
Arctic Sea Ice
Water Level in Lake Powell
Mesopotamia Marshes
Solar Activity
Urbanization of Dubai
Recommend this article feeds • contact us
about the Earth Observatory • image use policy • privacy policy & important notices
the Earth Observatory is part of the EOS Project Science Office located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
webmaster: Paul Przyborski • NASA official: Lorraine Remer last updated: March 16, 2010
Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia´s Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large—sometimes very large—surface mines. This time-series of images of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia, illustrates why this controversial mining method is also called "mountaintop removal."
Based on data from NASA´s Landsat 5 satellite, these natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine as it moves from ridge to ridge between 1984 to 2009. The natural landscape of the area is dark green forested mountains, creased by streams and indented by hollows. The active mining areas appear off-white, while areas being reclaimed with vegetation appear light green. A pipeline roughly bisects the images from north to south. The town of Madison, lower right, lies along the banks of the Coal River.
In 1984, the mining operation is limited to a relatively small area west of the Coal River. The mine first expands along mountaintops to the southwest, tracing an oak-leaf-shaped outline around the hollows of Big Horse Creek and continuing in an unbroken line across the ridges to the southwest. Between 1991 and 1992, the mine moves north, and the impact of one of the most controversial aspects of mountaintop mining—rock and earth dams called valley fills—becomes evident.
The law requires coal operators to try to restore the land to its approximate original shape, but the rock debris generally can´t be securely piled as high or graded as steeply as the original mountaintop. There is always too much rock left over, and coal companies dispose of it by building valley fills in hollows, gullies, and streams. Between 1991 and 1992, this leveling and filling in of the topography becomes noticeable as the mine expands northward across a stream valley called Stanley Fork (image center).
The most dramatic valley fill that appears in the series, however, is what appears to be the near-complete filling of Connelly Branch from its source to its mouth at the Mud River between 1996 and 2000. Since 2004, the mine has expanded from the Connelly Branch area to the mountaintops north of the Mud River. Significant changes are apparent to the ridges and valleys feeding into Berry Branch by 2009. Over the 25-year period, the disturbed area grew to more than 10,000 acres (15.6 square miles).
According to a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 40 percent of the year-round and seasonal streams in the Mud River watershed upstream of and including Connelly Branch had been filled or approved for filling through 1998. In 2009, the EPA intervened in the approval of a permit to further expand the Hobet mine into the Berry Branch area and worked with mine operators to minimize the disturbance and to reduce the number and size of valley fills.
Still, some scientists argue that current regulations and mitigation strategies are inadequate. In February, a team of scientists published a review of research on mountaintop mining and valley fills in the magazine Science. The scientists concluded that the impacts on stream and groundwater quality, biodiversity, and forest productivity were "pervasive and irreversible" and that current strategies for mitigation and restoration were not compensating for the degradation.
References
Palmer, M. A., Bernhardt, E. S., Schlesinger, W. H., Eshleman, K. N., Foufoula-Georgiou, E., Hendryx, M. S., et al. (2010). Mountaintop Mining Consequences. Science, 327(5962), 148-149.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2009, September 11). EPA Releases Preliminary Results for Surface Coal Mining Permit Reviews. EPA.gov. Retrieved March 2, 2010.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (1998). Permitted Stream Losses Due to Valley FIlling in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia: A Partial Inventory. Pennsylvania Ecological Services Field Office, State College, PA.
Links
More mine images on the Earth Observatory
Coal Controversy in Appalachia
Next Page: Yellow River Delta1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 World of Change
Mountaintop Mining, West Virginia
Yellow River Delta
Drought Cycles in Australia
El Niño, La Niña, and Rainfall
Severe Storms
Evaporation of the Aral Sea
Burn Recovery in Yellowstone
Global Biosphere
Antarctic Ozone Hole
Amazon Deforestation
Antarctic Sea Ice
Arctic Sea Ice
Water Level in Lake Powell
Mesopotamia Marshes
Solar Activity
Urbanization of Dubai
Recommend this article feeds • contact us
about the Earth Observatory • image use policy • privacy policy & important notices
the Earth Observatory is part of the EOS Project Science Office located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
webmaster: Paul Przyborski • NASA official: Lorraine Remer last updated: March 16, 2010
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