Late last year, President Trump announced a massive scaling back of the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), part of an even larger reduction of National Monuments in Utah, including nearby Bears Ears. Now a Canadian firm has announced plans to reopen a closed mine1 within the former boundaries of the old Grand Staircase-Escalante […]
After our discovery of what appeared to be a significant amount of mining taking place outside the permit boundaries provided by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP), we did a little digging to try and get a better idea of what exactly happened. With the help of colleagues at Appalachian Voices, we found […]
[The Mountain Top Removal visualization tool has been retired, but the MTR data is updated annually.] 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 […]
The President announced sizeable reductions of several National Monuments earlier this week. To help people see and understand the significance of this action, we produced an interactive map showing two of the most highly impacted Monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase – Escalante, both in Utah. Users of the map can zoom in and explore the […]
[The Mountain Top Removal visualization tool has been retired, but the MTR data is updated annually.] 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. […]