Abstract

Disturbance Mapping and Landscape Modeling of Mountaintop Mining Using ArcGIS
Track: Environmental Management
Authors: Aaron Maxwell, Charlie Yuill, J. Petty, Eric Merriam, Christine Mazzarella, Mike Strager

Mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia continues to be studied to evaluate its cumulative impact on aquatic and terrestrial systems. Vital to the evaluation is the ability to map disturbance features over large extents. Our approach was to integrate both Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing to classify disturbed landscape features for mining, forestry, and construction activities. Spectrally driven analysis of 1 meter spatial resolution aerial imagery combined with landform terrain analysis allowed for accurate classifications. GIS data layers were combined in order to summarize the distribution of disturbance throughout watersheds of interest. Individual watershed variables were accumulated to better map the cumulative impacts spatially throughout the watershed. The approach offers an improvement over traditional approaches that assumed the permitted mine area was the full extent of disturbance. We found on average that 28% of a mine permit was disturbed at any particular time of mining activity.