Environmental aspects of coal production in the Appalachian region. Progress report, June 1, 1978-May 31, 1979. [New River area, Tennessee]

The overall project focus is on damage agent flow resulting from strip mining. The purpose of conducting the various activities simultaneously in four separate tasks is to fully identify the specific damage agents released during the mining process, quantify them, describe their origin and method of transport and to assess the effects of these agents: biological, chemical and physical. The common time and location of study for the individual research tasks allows an economy of data acquisition and exchange not possible through sequential task performance and, even more importantly with field research, all observations have a commonality of climatological, geological and physical variables. While restricted initially to field work in the mining areas of eastern Tennessee, models developed and phenomena observed are being tested for generalization and regional application as part of long-term project goals. Findings are reported for each of the individual research tasks below on work conducted to date. Collectively, the findings represent the range of distinct advancements, confirmation of expected behavior, definition of problem presence or absence, better definition of specific research direction, and in some cases, illumination of new directions that need to be pursued.