Identifying Surface Mine Extent Across Central Appalachia Using Time Series Analysis, 1984-2015

Background

The identification of mined areas is a common application in remote sensing (Campbell & Wynne, 2011), but with a few exceptions, there has been minimal study of changes in the extent of surface mining across all of Central Appalachia, where there is a long history of land disturbance due to mining. Slonecker and Benger (2002) thoroughly reviewed the extent of research using remote sensing to evaluate surface mining through the end of the 1990s and determined that it is an effective way to examine mining and its impacts. More specific to our region of interest, Townsend et al. (2009) presented an examination of changes in surface mining extent and reclamation over time using Landsat in a coalfield region of Appalachia, with accuracy levels above 85%. A combination of LiDAR-derived data and satellite imagery in the coalfields of southern West Virginia proved to be an effective way to classify land cover within a mine-permitted area (Maxwell, Warner, Strager, & Pal, 2014). Although these studies proved that their methods were effective at identifying surface mining extents, both examined relatively small regions within the Appalachian coalfield.