Study: Mountaintop-removal coal mining has made parts of Central Appalachia 60 percent flatter

Mountaintop removal over the past 40 years has made parts of Central Appalachia 60 percent flatter than before the process began, says a study by Duke University published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Researchers, who say this is the first study "to examine the regional impact of mountaintop mines on landscape topography and how the changes might influence water quality," compared pre- and post-mining topographic data in southern West Virginia.

 Headwaters of Twentymile Creek before and after mining;
the greener an area is, the flatter it is (Duke Univ. maps)

"By comparing digitized topographic maps from West Virginia before mountaintop mining became extensive with elevation data collected by aircraft in 2010, the researchers found that the mines and valley fills could range anywhere from 10 to 200 meters deep," Kara Manke reports for Duke Today. "Across the region, the average slope of the land dropped by more than 10 degrees post-mining."

Emily Bernhardt, a professor of biology at Duke and co-author of the study, told Manke, “We tend to measure the impact of human activity based on the area it affects on a map, but mountaintop mining is penetrating much more deeply into the earth than other land use in the region like forestry, agriculture or urbanization. The depth of these impacts is changing the way the geology, water, and vegetation interact in fundamental ways that are likely to persist far longer than other forms of land use.” (Read more)