Mining

NASA Earth Observatory image modified by SkyTruth

Archive for category: Mining

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The remnants of a likely bilge dump (dark streak) possibly from a vessel traveling north to a tanker “parking lot” (the cluster of dozens of bright spots, each representing a vessel at anchor) off the coast of United Arab Emirates.

From Monitoring for Bilge-Dumping to Analyzing Coal Mining Activity and Mapping a Proposed Pipeline Expansion, My Year in Review

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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 […]

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Coal mining in Black Thunder coal mine, WY from 1985 (in green) to 2015 (in red) overlain on 2015 aerial survey photography (NAIP).

Examining Mining Operations in the Powder River Basin Using Google Earth Engine

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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 […]

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Summer Research Focus

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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 […]

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Infrastructure Drives Development in the Brazilian Amazon: Highway –> Hydroelectric Plant –> Gold Mine

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Big changes are happening in the Brazilian Amazon along a stretch of the Xingu River known as the Volta Grande (Big Bend), where it takes a detour to the south before turning back north to flow into the Amazon River. The region has experienced rapid growth and deforestation following the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway […]

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Mountain Top Removal in Appalachia: What’s in your backyard?

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[The Mountain Top Removal visualization tool has been retired, but the MTR data is updated annually.] SkyTruth’s new Mountain Top Removal visualization tool is now available to inspect active mining data for 74 counties in Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and Virginia. The website can be accessed at SkyTruthMTR.appspot.com. The maps leverage tens of thousands of […]

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