A methodology for the environmental assessment of advanced coal extraction systems

Procedures developed to identify and assess potential environment impacts of advanced mining technology as it moves from a generic concept to a more systems definition are described. Two levels of assessment are defined in terms of the design stage of the technology being evaluated. The first level of analysis is appropriate to a conceptual design. At this level it is assumed that each mining process has known and potential environmental impacts that are generic to each mining activity. By using this assumption, potential environmental impacts can be identified for new mining systems. When two or more systems have been assessed, they can be evaluated comparing potential environmental impacts. At the preliminary stage of design, a systems performance can be assessed again with more precision. At this level of systems definition, potential environmental impacts can be analyzed and their significane determined in a manner to facilitate comparisons between systems. At each level of analysis, suggestions calculated to help the designer mitigate potentially harmful impacts are provided

Gypsum dissolution geohazards at Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK

This guide is for a one-day field excursion to examine gypsum dissolution geohazards at Ripon in North Yorkshire. Gypsum is a highly soluble rock and under suitable groundwater flow conditions it can dissolve forming caves and karstic features including collapse and suffosion dolines. These have the capability of causing subsidence damage of the type that affects much of the Ripon area. The guide details the processes involved, the localities visited and some of the remedial measures undertaken

Predicting Land Reclamation of Bond Released Surface Mines

Accurately measuring the recovery of released surface mines in the UnitedStates poses crucial challenges. This study aims to develop a prediction of land classification, that considers various environmental and coal mine variables. By utilizing this prediction, the researchers and environmentalists (specifically Appalachian Voices, the group heading this research) can better understand the relevant factors for successful reclamation. Efficient management of mine recovery is essential for environmental sustainability, regulatory compliance, and resource utilization. This study focuses on the Appalachian Forest area, which risks becoming a net carbon source (a place that emits more carbon than it absorbs) due to mine recovery. Machine and deep learning methods will be employed using Dynamic World land classification probabilities to identify areas requiring intervention and to provide ongoing insight into released mine conditions. The findings enable decision-making for prioritized reclamation and restoration measures

Balancing Hydraulic Fracturing’s Environmental and Economic Impacts: The Need for a Comprehensive Federal Baseline and the Provision of Local Rights

Reliable evaluation methods is needed to ensure that investments in energy conservation measures (ECMs) and the construction of new energy efficient buildings lives up to the promised and expected performance. This thesis presents and evaluates a regression method for estimation of influential building parameters: transmission losses above ground (including air leakage), ground heat loss, and overall heat loss coefficient. The analysis is conducted with separately metered electricity, heating and weather data using linear regression models based on the simplified steady-state power balance for a whole building. The evaluation consists of analyzing the robustness of the extracted parameters, their suitability to be used as input values to building energy simulations (BES) tools. In addition, differences between uncalibrated and calibrated BES models are analyzed when they are used to calculate energy savings. Finally the suitability of using a buildings overall heat loss coefficient as a performance verification tool is studied. The presented regression method exhibits high robustness and good agreement with theory. Knowledge of these parameters also proved beneficial in BES calibration procedures as well as in performance verifications. Thus, the presented method shows promising features for reliable energy performance assessments of buildings

Current marine pressures and mechanisms driving changes in marine habitats

Human activities and the resultant pressures they place on the marine environment have been widely demonstrated to contribute to habitat degradation, therefore, their identification and quantification is an essential step towards any meaningful restoration effort. The overall scope of MERCES Deliverable 1.2 is to review current knowledge regarding the major marine pressures placed upon marine ecosystems in EU waters and the mechanisms by which they impact habitats in order to determine potential restoration pathways. An understanding of their geographical distribution is critical for any local assessment of degradation, as well as for planning conservation and restoration actions. This information would ideally be in the form of maps, which: (a) compile single or multiple activities and pressures over broad scales, integrating and visualizing available data and allowing direct identification of aggregations as well as gaps and (b) may be overlaid with habitat maps (or any other map layer containing additional information), thus combining different data levels and producing new information to be used for example when implementing EU policies. The deliverable also documents typical example habitat case studies, the prominent impacts and consequences of activities and pressures towards the identification of possible restoration or mitigation actions. Finally the deliverable discusses pressures, assessments, marine spatial planning and blue growth potential. Activities and pressures are used in a strict sense, where marine activities are undertaken to satisfy the needs of societal drivers (e.g. aquaculture or tourism) and pressures are considered to be the mechanism through which an activity has an actual or potential effect on any part of the ecosystem (e.g. for demersal trawling activity, one pressure would be abrasion of the seabed). Habitats are addressed using a nested approach from large-scale geological features (e.g. shallow soft bottoms) to species-characterised habitats (e.g. Posidonia meadows) because of the way they are referred to in current policy documents which lack standard and precise definitions

Best Regulatory Practices for Deep Seabed Mining: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act

Mining operations around the globe are responsible for significant environmental problems. These problems often stem from poor planning, inadequate regulatory standards, and a failure of regulatory oversight, particularly with respect to inspection and enforcement regimes. Mining regulators are often hamstrung, however, by inadequate information about potential impacts before operations commence. This problem is particularly daunting when considering mining on ocean floors where information about the environment is limited, and the impacts of mining are poorly understood. As the International Seabed Authority (ISA) develops a comprehensive regulatory program for deep seabed mining, they should draw on the experience gained in regulating terrestrial mining, subject, of course, to the caveat that deep seabed mining poses unique challenges that will require different and sometimes innovative regulatory solutions. In reviewing regulatory programs for terrestrial mining operations, one would be hard-pressed to find a program that is more thorough and creative than that established by the U.S. Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). For reasons that are related primarily to the contentious politics surrounding coal mining regulation in the United States, SMCRA has never lived up to its promise. Nonetheless, the law remains largely intact and, despite its implementation challenges, affords a useful framework for thinking about an appropriate strategy for regulating deep seabed mining. This case study outlines the contours of the regulatory program established under SMCRA insofar as it may be relevant to regulating deep seabed mining. It acknowledges some of SMCRA’s flaws and omissions, and where appropriate, it suggests regulatory practices that go beyond SMCRA. Nonetheless, and despite SMCRA’s limitations, the program established under this law reflects modern thinking about the procedures that should be followed in managing mining activities in challenging environments, and thus offers a useful lens for designing a regulatory program for deep seabed mining

Cumulative effects modeling in the mountaintop removal mining region of the central Appalachians

Anthropogenic alteration of natural land cover is a global driver of aquatic resource impairment. It is increasingly recognized that aquatic systems are impacted by multiple land use activities that combine additively and interactively to result in unique patterns of degradation (i.e., cumulative effects). Moreover, stream networks are multi-scaled, hierarchically structured systems wherein localized impacts can have both local (e.g., stream segment) and regional (e.g., watershed) consequences. Thus, there has been a recent push to construct statistical models capable of predicting and forecasting aquatic conditions under current and future landuse scenarios (i.e., scenario analysis) and characterize local and regional processes dictating observed patterns of ecological degradation.;Nowhere is there a greater need for decisive and empirically-driven aquatic resource management than within the Mountaintop Removal-Valley Fill (MTR-VF) mining region of the central Appalachians, where dramatic changes in land cover associated with large scale surface mining can produce strong measurable impacts to downstream ecosystems. However, several knowledge gaps currently limit aquatic resource management within this actively developing and socioeconomically important region. Notably, the extent to which surface mining-related stressors interact with those of other landuse activities is unclear.;In my first chapter, I tested for additive and interactive effects of dominant landuse activities (i.e., surface mining, deep mining, and residential development) on water quality (specific conductance and Se), habitat quality, and benthic macroinvertebrates via a uniquely designed watershed-scale assessment of the Coal River, West Virginia. I derived equations for predicting in-stream response to landscape changes and predicted the outcome of a realistic future scenario involving development of 15 permitted mines. I found that surface mining, underground mining, and residential development altered physical, chemical and biological condition through additive and complex interactive effects.;My second chapter focused on constructing landscape-based cumulative effects models capable of predicting in-stream response to future surface-mine development within the context of other landuse activities throughout the MTR-VF region. Predictive models provided precise estimates of specific conductance (model R2 ≤0.77 and cross-validated R2 ≤0.74), Se (0.74 and 0.70), and benthic macroinvertebrate community composition (0.72 and 0.65) and predicted high levels of chemical (33%) and biological (67%) impairment as a result of additive and interactive effects of surface mining, underground mining, and residential development. Of this total impairment, however, \u3c25% could be attributed to surface mining alone. Furthermore, the surface-mining level that results in exceedance of the 300 muS/cm conductivity benchmark increased from 4.4% in the presence of other stressors to 16.6% when only surface mining was present.;My third chapter focused on characterizing how multiple landuse activities control detailed patterns in local water chemistry. Principal component (PC) analysis identified 3 important dimensions of variation in water chemistry that were significantly correlated with contemporary surface mining (PC1, elevated dominant ions, sulfate, alkalinity, and selenium), coal geology and legacy mines (PC2, elevated trace metals), and residential development (PC3, elevated sodium and chloride). The combination of these 3 dominant sources of pollutants produced a complex stream-to-stream patchwork of contaminant mixtures. Seventy-five percent of headwater streams (catchments \u3c5km 2) had water chemistries that classified as either reference (49%), development only (18%) or mining only (8%). Only 21% of larger streams (catchments \u3e5km2) were classified as having reference chemistries, and chemistries indicative of combined mining and development contaminants accounted for 47% of larger streams (compared to 26% of headwater streams).;My fourth chapter was focused on quantifying the extent to which pervasive physicochemical degradation throughout the MTR-VF region influences regional metacommunity structure and processes. Notably, conservation of undisturbed headwater streams is a common management activity in disturbed watersheds because of their ability to preserve regional biodiversity. However, undisturbed headwater streams are often isolated within heavily degraded regions, leaving their communities at risk of losing sensitive, poor dispersing taxa (through decreased mass and rescue effects) and gaining tolerant, widely dispersing taxa (through increased dispersal and mass effects) from nearby degraded habitats. Results of this chapter suggest that both local (observed physicochemical conditions) and neighborhood (condition of streams within a 5km buffer) conditions explain significant variation in assemblage structure across all taxa. However, the strength of neighborhood effects varied as a function of taxon-specific tolerance and dispersal characteristics. Several taxa (Chironomidae, Hemerodromia, Chimarra) increased in occurrence and abundance with decreasing neighborhood conditions. Thus, invertebrate communities within even the most pristine streams are at risk when isolated within heavily impacted neighborhoods. Consequently, protection of regional species\u27 pools in heavily impacted regions will require more than simply conserving headwater catchments. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Just transition toolbox for coal regions

As the worldwide remaining carbon budget decreases rapidly, countries across the globe are searching for solutions to limit greenhouse gas emissions. As the production and use of coal is among the most carbon-intensive processes, it is foreseeable that coal regions will be particularly affected by the consequences of a transformation towards a climate-neutral economy and energy system. Challenges arise in the area of energy production, environmental protection, but also for economic and social aspects in the transforming regions - often coined with the term "Just Transition". For the decision makers in coal regions, there is an urgent need for support tools that help to kick off measures to diversify the local economies while at the same time supporting the local workers and communities. The Wuppertal Institute aims to support coal regions worldwide by developing a Just Transition Toolbox, which illustrates the challenges and opportunities of a sustainable transition for a global audience. It comprises information about strategy development, sets recommendations for governance structures, fostering sustainable employment, highlights technology options and sheds light on the environmental rehabilitation and repurposing of coal-related sites and infrastructure. The toolbox builds on the work of the Wuppertal Institute for the EU Initiative for Coal Regions in Transition and takes into account country-specific findings from the SPIPA-partner countries India, Indonesia, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the USA. The acronym SPIPA is short for "Strategic Partnerships for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement" an EU-BMU programme co-financed by the GIZ