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.