Contour coal mining (more commonly referred to as "mountaintop removal" or MTR) is a form of surface mining and controversial practice throughout the hollows of the central Appalachian Mountains. Primarily located in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee; explosives are used to remove up to 400 vertical feet of mountain to gain access to the coal seams. Excess referred to as 'overburden' is then relocated to the into the 'valley fills' which have a legacy of not only disrupting the flow of head streams but completely covering rivers. Artificial streams are commonly created to try and naturalize the surface hydrology. This is often times unsuccessful (as displayed by tangeom run-off simulation displayed on the raster page).
The sheer size of the mines have become quite substantial. Given that this particular part of Appalachia is the second most biologically diverse terrestrial landscape in the world (second to the Amazon rainforest), the environmental implications are staggering. These particular 'ecological sacrifice zones' are in many ways serves as the social context for a mono-economy which has become increasingly reliant on mechanization (not to mention dynamite and the world's largest drag-line shoves). As discussed and displayed on this webpage, the socio-spatial dialectic nature of industrial coal extraction (facilitated by the railroad company CSX) not only deteriorates the ecological biodiversity but quality of working conditions and potential for community throughout the various hollow's of southern Appalachia. Not only has this become an region of concentrated poverty but the political-economic relations has led the the second mass exodus of citizens in the last 50 years. As a result, the ghost towns of the area has become abstract space of resource extraction and mountain justice resistance movements.
The sheer size of the mines have become quite substantial. Given that this particular part of Appalachia is the second most biologically diverse terrestrial landscape in the world (second to the Amazon rainforest), the environmental implications are staggering. These particular 'ecological sacrifice zones' are in many ways serves as the social context for a mono-economy which has become increasingly reliant on mechanization (not to mention dynamite and the world's largest drag-line shoves). As discussed and displayed on this webpage, the socio-spatial dialectic nature of industrial coal extraction (facilitated by the railroad company CSX) not only deteriorates the ecological biodiversity but quality of working conditions and potential for community throughout the various hollow's of southern Appalachia. Not only has this become an region of concentrated poverty but the political-economic relations has led the the second mass exodus of citizens in the last 50 years. As a result, the ghost towns of the area has become abstract space of resource extraction and mountain justice resistance movements.
WV_MTR Public Research by R.W. Thomson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This website is the result of a spatial inquiry conducted by Ryan W. Thomson; a graduate student at NC State University.
11.21.2014
11.21.2014