Then:
And now:
The good folks at NASA’s Earth Observatory Web site just posted tomorrow’s “Image of the Day,” and it’s an interesting look at the Growth of Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia.
The site features two satellite photos of the Hobet 21 mining complex along the Boone-Lincoln County line south of Charleston, one from 1984 (top) and one from last summer (bottom).
Earth Observatory explained:
Based on data from NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite, these natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine in Boone County, West Virginia, as it expands 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.
Earth Observatory previously covered the mountaintop removal issue with a feature called Coal Controversy in Appalachia, available here. Please visit their site to get a bigger and better look at the photos I’ve posted above.
And be sure to click here to watch a photo show of how the Hobet 21 images have changed over time.
Subscribe to the Coal Tattoo
Can’t compete with Google Maps; a shame that OSM doesn’t share its Google Maps coal mine inventory
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Closer looks:
http://feww.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/mountaintop-removal-fly-over-19.jpg
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/sago/sago-05.jpg
http://maps.pomocnik.com/img/photos/kompalniaielektrownia.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/schuberts/424042721/
http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0208/500264.html
http://susty.com/image/coal-wall-coal-mine-resource-extraction-tiny-car-person-pit-quarry-blue-sky-clouds-landscape-fossil-fuel-photo.jpg
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Mining Permits across West Virginia
Posted December 28, 2007
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8344
Coal Sludge Impoundments, West Virginia
Posted April 25, 2008
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8693
North Antelope Rochelle Coal Mine, Wyoming
Posted October 10, 2005
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=5915
Coal Mines in Germany
Posted August 2, 2001
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1642
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Earth as Art: Florida Everglades
(with 2-mile runway built and abandoned in 1969)
Image taken 2/5/2000
http://earthasart.gsfc.nasa.gov/everglades_p.html
South Florida Satellite Image Maps
http://sofia.usgs.gov/projects/remote_sens/sflsatmap.html
(USGS should do this for WV too)
I’d like to draw your attention to one thing most observers will probably miss. The town of Madison, in the lower right of the image. Note that the town’s outline is virtually the same as in 1984: no growth. Can anyone who thinks that strip mining is good for the economy explain that?
One of the things that these images made clear to me is that the even after 25 years, the boundaries of the first parts of the mine to be disturbed are still obvious by the contrast in the vegetation.
If a mine permit calls for only a 10- or 15-year post-mining monitoring of reclamation, how will regulators be assured that the natural forest cover will ever return? How can a regulatory framework that returns a bond to a mine operator before it has been established that the land can recover be adequate?
I suppose that ensuring and demonstrating through long-term monitoring (clearly not even 25 years is enough in the case of this mine) that the land will ever support a forest again isn’t actually a requirement, but it seems to me like it should be.
Old growth forests take time. And younger growth provides great benefits for wildlife. The reclamation is on the right track. Practices are far better than in generations past.
If you want to look at change over time, you might want to give this demo a try:
http://gisonline.dep.wv.gov/timeseries/landsat.html
It lets you toggle between four landsat images of southern WV and KY between 1984-2008
From what I’ve read & heard. Forests will never be able to grow back like they were. At least not in this century. With all the top soil gone there is not enough nutrient in the soil to sustain them. the only thing that will grow is a fescue grass. Some sort of hybrid developed to grow on almost anything. Even rock.
Coal companies do a good job hiding their destructive practices from people driving by on road adjacent to MTR sites (especially on roads that have lots of non-local traffic). I think that these images are a really important tool for public education about the vast destruction caused by mountaintop removal and are probably one of the major driving forces towards congressional and public opposition to the practice.
There will never be anything even remotely resembling old growth forest on these sites. There is no reclamation target for “old growth forest” and true old growth is the end result of millennial scale processes. Early successional habitats are valuable to game birds and animals, but embedded in a matrix of other forest cover types and not as large contiguous blocks spanning thousands and thousands of acres. The wildlife value of these plots is essentially nil, except it gives you a place to see elk. Ecological restoration of a site like this is a bit like trying to grow a jungle on the moon.
These images show shifting strip mines in eastern Ohio, from the 1970s to the 1980s and 1990s. In these images, the mines appear as bright gray areas. Some of the reclaimed former mines are distinguishable from the surrounding vegetation by their darker red color.
http://earthshots.usgs.gov/Muskingum/Muskingum
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Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Plant
Landsat 5
November 20, 2008 and December 22, 2008
http://landsat.usgs.gov/about_LU_Vol_3_Issue_3.php#9
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36352/kingston_tm_2008357_lrg.jpg