Mountain top mining effects on watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry: Learning from manipulation of the critical zone

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The watershed landscape in Central Appalachia is rapidly changing as a result of mountain top mining of coal with valley fill (MTMVF). During MTMVF operations, mountain ridges are removed with explosives to expose seams of coal too shallow to require underground mining. The waste rocks generated from these ridges are then deposited in adjacent stream valleys, filling the valleys beneath tens to hundreds of meters of this overburden. The landscapes left behind are dramatically altered and present both a significant challenge and opportunity to explore how the human restructuring of a watershed alters the timing and chemistry of stream flows. Through comparative analyses of mined and unmined watersheds, this project will provide much needed knowledge about how water availability, water quality, and flood risks are being altered by MTMVF. Little prior knowledge exists for predicting hydrologic response to this extreme landscape disturbance that penetrates hundreds of meters into bedrock and leaves behind a reconfigured topography overlying a reorganized subsurface. MTMVF must drastically alter watershed hydrology and solute transport dynamics. Yet basic hydrologic theory and experimental manipulations of vegetation and surficial soils are insufficient to predict how MTMVF will change the magnitude and timing of water and solute transport in watersheds. This project will combine high resolution terrain analyses, intensive field measurement campaigns, and cutting edge modeling tools to examine and predict how hydro-biogeochemical responses to precipitation differ between mined and unmined landscapes from headwater to river basin scales. This research will also provide insight into how land surface and subsurface structures interact to influence hydrological and geochemical dynamics, improving our understanding of watershed hydrology in both natural and disturbed landscapes.