Stuff you should know…mountain-top mining

Mountain-top mining seems to be in the news everywhere these days.  Josh and Chuck, two of my favorite podcast personalities who host “Stuff You Should Know (SYSK),” had a story on mountain-top mining last week called “What is mountaintop removal mining?”  It was informative, probably best for a lay audience, and included a musical performance – a first for their show.  The reason I am blogging about this podcast is that they mention the Powell River Project in their story!  However, they failed to mention that this is a Virginia Tech cooperative program.  The Powell River Project is a cooperative project between the coal mining companies and academia that conducts research and education programs to improve restoration of mined lands.  Anyway, the SYSK podcast worth a listen.  I happen to be listening to this podcast as I was driving through the backcountry of West Virginia (a perfect setting for the story) headed to a meeting where I met Nic Zegre from WVU.  Nic and I have a small NSF grant to use an isotope hydrology approach to detect changes in rainfall-runoff processes in a mountain-top mining and valley fill watershed.