Study details how mining has flattened WV
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20160208/study-details-how-mining-has-flattened-wv
Decades of mountaintop removal have left the coalfields of West Virginia nearly 40 percent flatter than they once were, according to a new scientific study that tries to provide a clearer picture of the long-term impacts of large-scale surface coal mining.
Blasting apart ridges and filling valleys has reduced the average slope of mining regions of Southern West Virginia by about 10 degrees, according to the study, performed by researchers at Duke University and published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology....
In mined areas, researchers found a 30 percent increase in areas with slopes lower than 25 degrees, reflecting “newly created flat ridges and gentle hillslopes, once rare in Central Appalachia,” the study said. Mining also has created flat plateaus in many areas, a sharp contrast to the pattern of steepening topography caused by erosion rates in the Appalachians, the study said.
“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,” said Emily Bernhardt, a professor of biology at Duke and co-author on the study. “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.”
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