We were recently reviewing imagery of mine sites which experienced growth in 2017. We overlaid the mine permit boundaries that show where the government has legally granted companies permission to mine. We used our Landsat-based surface mining data to identify a set of candidate sites to examine more closely with higher-resolution Planet imagery through Planet’s […]
Some time has passed since we’ve written about our work mapping surface mining in central Appalachia, but rest assured, we’re still actively monitoring this devastating practice. Our mining work to date has focused on mapping the locations of these operations. Researchers, some of whom are using our data, are beginning to draw troubling connections between […]
International Projects This summer, SkyTruth began monitoring bilge dumping “hotspots.” I focused my monitoring efforts in the coastal waters surrounding the United Arab Emirates and Oman or the “tip” of the Arabian Peninsula. I began by visiting the European Space Agency’s datahub (and USGS) daily and downloading tons of imagery. The downloading of imagery was tedious […]
When you hear of coal production in America, what comes to mind? Perhaps you imagine a rugged man with a miner’s lamp on his helmet descending into a tunnel several hundred feet below the ground. Or maybe you picture giant machines removing topsoil and bedrock from a forested West Virginia mountain. But what if I […]
It’s an exciting time around the office. We finalized our summer research program and added a couple of new faces—interns Brian Wong from Duke University and Flynn Robinson from West Virginia University—to help us expand our skill set and cover more ground. Brian is helping us improve our mountaintop removal (MTR) mining work. We’ve already […]