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

阿巴拉契亚中部的流域景观正在迅速发生变化，这是山谷充填采矿（MTMVF）的结果。在MTMVF作业中，用炸药除去山脊，露出太浅而不需要地下开采的煤层。从这些山脊产生的废石然后沉积在邻近的溪谷中，填满了数十到数百米深的覆盖层下的山谷。留下的景观发生了巨大的变化，为探索人类对流域的重建如何改变河流的时间和化学成分提供了重大的挑战和机遇。通过对开采和未开采的流域进行比较分析，该项目将提供有关MTMVF如何改变水的可用性、水质和洪水风险的急需知识。这种极端的景观扰动渗透到数百米的基岩中，留下了一个重新配置的地形，覆盖在重新组织的地下，对于预测水文响应的先验知识很少。MTMVF必须彻底改变流域水文和溶质运移动力学。然而，基本的水文学理论和植被和表层土壤的实验操作不足以预测MTMVF将如何改变流域水和溶质运输的大小和时间。该项目将结合高分辨率地形分析、密集的实地测量活动和尖端的建模工具，研究和预测从源头到流域尺度，开采和未开采景观对降水的水文生物地球化学反应的差异。这项研究还将深入了解地表和地下结构如何相互作用，影响水文和地球化学动力学，提高我们对自然和受干扰景观中流域水文的理解。

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.