Mining disturbances in Virginia's southwestern coalfield, 1984-2011
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Date
2015-06-01Author
Li, Jing
Donovan, Patricia F.
Zipper, Carl E.
Wynne, Randolph H.
Oliphant, Adam J.
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Coal mining has been taking place in southwestern Virginia's
Appalachian coalfield for more than a century, and surface mining has
been a common method of coal extraction since the 1960s. Coal surface
mining creates a significant landscape disturbance that is visible
from space during the period of active mining. Researcher's have
constructed a surface-mining disturbance history for Virginia's
Appalachian coalfield that extends from the early 1980s through 2011.
A series of multispectral images of the region produced by Landsat
satellites and extending from 1984 through 2011 was obtained and
analyzed. The automated analysis generated a geospatial data file
that identifies surface mined areas spatially and by year of initial
disturbance as detected during that period. The classification
accuracy was found to be 93.5 percent. A manuscript describing the analysis methods, and interpreting and
discussing results, has been published by Environmental Monitoring
and Assessment. The citation is, Li, J., Zipper, C.E., Donovan, P.F.,
Wynne, R.H., and Oliphant, A.J., 2015, Reconstruction disturbance
history for an intensively mined region by time-series analysis of
Landsat imagery, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, vol.
187:557. DOI: 10.1007/s10661-015-4766-1 and can be accessed at:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10661-015-4766-1 .