Predicting erosion at valley fills with two reclamation techniques in mountainous terrain

Sears, A.E.; Hopkinson, Leslie; Quaranta, John D.

doi:10.1080/17480930.2018.1516938

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…5). Our findings are consistent with empirical modeling suggesting that the vegetated state of the post-MTR/VF landscape governs short-term erosion (Sears et al, 2020), and further points to shortterm vegetation recovery remaining a key control on sediment export over millennia.…”

Section: Topographic and Vegetation Controls On Post-mtr/vf Erosionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…This suggests that as long as mine reclamation involves building valley fill landforms that have high slope and high drainage area, flowing water will leverage the resulting geomorphic disequilibrium to re-establish a drainage network, driving erosion of the valley fill surface that will outpace that of adjacent natural landforms. Even establishing engineered, armored channels along the margins of valley fills can in some cases prove ine↵ective at stopping gullying (Reed and Kite, 2020;Sears et al, 2020). Our work speaks to the potential importance of Geomorphic Landform Design (e.g., Hancock et al, 2003;Lowry et al, 2013;DePriest et al, 2015;Hancock et al, 2020a), the practice of building landforms that have slope-area distributions as similar as possible to the pre-mining landscape.…”

Section: Implications For Managementmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Landscape evolution models have already enabled extensive geomorphic prediction and hypothesis testing in post-mining landscapes (e.g., Willgoose and Riley, 1998;Lowry et al, 2013;Hancock et al, 2000Hancock et al, , 2015. While static, empirical soil erosion models (i.e., RUSLE) have been used to assess the short-term geomorphic e↵ects of MTR/VF mining (Sears et al, 2020), there have been no long-term process-based studies of the geomorphic response to MTR/VF mining in the AC region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 2: Modeling the influence of topography and vegetation

Bower,

Shobe,

Maxwell

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Erosion following human disturbance threatens ecosystem health and inhibits effective land use. Mountaintop removal (MTR) mined landscapes of the Appalachian Coalfields region, USA, provide a unique opportunity to quantify the geomorphic trajectory of disturbed lands. Here we assess how MTR-induced changes to topography and vegetation influence spatiotemporal erosion patterns by modeling landscape evolution in five mined watersheds. We use landscape evolution models starting from pre-MTR and post-MTR topographic data to isolate the influence of mining-induced topographic change. We then constrain ranges of erodibility from incision depths of gully features on mine margins, and use those estimates to model the influence of vegetation recovery trends on erosion. Results show that topographic alterations alone reduce total sediment flux from mined catchments. Model runs that incorporate the disturbance and recovery of vegetation in mined watersheds show that, in any scenario other than complete vegetation recovery, vegetation disturbance drives higher total sediment export from mined catchments than from unmined catchments. Scenarios with no vegetation disturbance or full recovery exhibit sediment fluxes that decline over time post-recovery, while those without full recovery experience fluxes that increase over time even after recovery is complete. Spatiotemporal erosion trends depend on 1) the extent of vegetation recovery and 2) the extent to which MTR has created slope–area disequilibrium in the landscape. Valley fills, headwater valleys that have been filled with waste rock, experience erosion rates orders of magnitude higher than those found in the unmined landscape, as do steep scarps left behind by mining. Rapid erosion of mined areas drives sediment accumulation in colluvial hollows, headwater stream valleys, and below mine scarps. Our numerical experiments suggest that reclamation practices focused on reducing hotspots of slope–area disequilibrium and controlling erosion during the first few decades of vegetation recovery would reduce the extent to which mined Appalachian watersheds experience different landscape evolution trajectories from unmined ones both during and long after the vegetation recovery period. Insights gained from MTR-influenced landscapes have the potential to improve mined land management as the renewable energy transition drives increased surface mining.

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Section: Topographic and Vegetation Controls On Post-mtr/vf Erosionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Implications For Managementmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 2: Modeling the influence of topography and vegetation

Bower,

Shobe,

Maxwell

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Vegetation e↵ects can be incorporated into models for post-MTR/VF landscape change in a bewildering array of ways: increases in the threshold stress for sediment entrainment by overland flow (e.g., Collins et al, 2004;Rengers et al, 2016); increases in soil cohesion and therefore stability of slopes (Schmidt et al, 2001;Simon and Collison, 2002); increases in land-surface roughness, infiltration, and interception of rainwater, reductions in the discharge, velocity, and erosive power of overland flow (Evans and Willgoose, 2000;Marston, 2010;Istanbulluoglu and Bras, 2005); and/or more generic decreases in land-surface erodibility (Evans and Willgoose, 2000;Istanbulluoglu and Bras, 2005;Sears et al, 2020;Bower et al, in review).…”

Section: Incorporating Erodibility Alterations Into Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 1: How mining changes erosion processes and variables

Shobe,

Bower,

Maxwell

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Surface mining may be humanity's most tangible impact on Earth's surface, and will become more prevalent globally as the energy transition progresses. Prediction of post-mining landscape change can help mitigate environmental damage and allow effective reuse of mined lands, but requires understanding how mining changes geomorphic processes and variables. Here we investigate surface mining's complex influence on surface processes in a case study of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining in the Appalachian Coalfields, USA. The future evolution of MTR-influenced landscapes is unclear, largely because the ways that human changes to the landscape affect geomorphic processes are poorly understood. Here we use geospatial analysis—leveraging the existence of pre- and post-MTR elevation models—and synthesis of literature to ask how MTR alters topography, hydrology, and land-surface erodibility and how these changes could be incorporated into numerical models of post-MTR landscape evolution. MTR mining reduces slope and slope–area product, and dramatically rearranges drainage divides. Creation of large numbers of closed depressions alters flow routing and casts doubt on the utility, especially over human timescales, of models that assume steady, uniform flow. MTR mining creates two contrasting hydrologic domains, one in which overland flow is generated efficiently due to a lack of infiltration capacity, and one in which waste rock deposits act as extensive subsurface reservoirs. This dichotomy creates localized hotspots of overland flow and erosion. Loss of forest cover probably reduces cohesion in near-surface soils for at least the timescale of vegetation recovery, while human-made VFs and mine soils also likely experience reduced erosion resistance. Our analysis suggests three necessary—though potentially not sufficient—ingredients for numerical modeling of post-MTR landscape change in the Appalachians: 1) accurate routing and accumulation of unsteady, nonuniform overland flow across low-gradient, engineered landscapes, 2) separation of the landscape into cut, filled, and unmined regions, and 3) incorporation of vegetation recovery trajectories. Our companion paper explores this final ingredient in detail. Improved modeling of post-mining landscapes will mitigate environmental degradation from past mining and reduce the impacts of future mining that supports the energy transition.

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The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 1: How mining changes erosion processes and variables

Shobe,

Bower,

Maxwell

et al. 2024

Geomorphology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Predicting erosion at valley fills with two reclamation techniques in mountainous terrain

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 2: Modeling the influence of topography and vegetation

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 2: Modeling the influence of topography and vegetation

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 1: How mining changes erosion processes and variables

The uncertain future of mountaintop-removal-mined landscapes 1: How mining changes erosion processes and variables

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