Author: AJ Gunson

Here is an interesting short article in Science on the impact of mountaintop mining. This may have a significant impact on coal mining policy in the eastern US.

Abstract

There has been a global, 30-year increase in surface mining (1), which is now the dominant driver of land-use change in the central Appalachian ecoregion of the United States (2). One major form of such mining, mountaintop mining with valley fills (MTM/VF) (3), is widespread throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia (WV), and southwestern Virginia. Upper elevation forests are cleared and stripped of topsoil, and explosives are used to break up rocks to access buried coal (fig. S1). Excess rock (mine “spoil”) is pushed into adjacent valleys, where it buries existing streams.

Link:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;327/5962/148?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=coal+mountaintop&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Friday, Nov 6, 2009 at 12:30 – 1:30pm
Presenter: Ben Bradshaw, Associate Professor and Peter Siebenmorgen, MA Candidate
Dept. of Geography, University of Guelph
Location: Library Processing Centre Room 491 – 2206 East Mall, Vancouver, BC
Online: Wimba Classroom* – login at www.soeh.ubc.ca/seminars

Please join us for the first 2009 SWG Greenbag Lunch, at Suite 640 – 580 HornbySt, 6th Floor. Infomine.com has been kind enough to share their space for this meeting. Please RSVP to Rebecca at rebchouinard@gmail.com by June 23rd. We will discuss the direction of this incarnation of SWG lunch meetings. Please bring your own lunch.

The following is an article on mineral scarcity, noted in the ecominerals Yahoo group (http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecominerals/). I’m entertained whenever I hear about somebody predicting that we will run out of iron (~%5 of the Earth’s crust). That said, the paper touches on the fascinating discussion of how we and the world will cope with another 40+ years of growing population and (hopefully) raising prosperity, combined with water and energy constraints, lower mineral grades, climate, etc. For background info, this falls within the realm of the Club of Rome’s 1972’s “The Limits to Growth” work.

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5239

Abstract

Please check out the publications page and let me know any comments.

Thanks