Pennsylvania Water Resources: Assessing the Impacts of Acid Mine Drainage Reclamation in Pennsylvania

Acid mine drainage associated with abandoned coal mine lands contaminates waterways, degrades land, and causes public health concerns. Earth Conservancy (EC) is a Pennsylvania non-profit that addresses the legacy of anthracite coal mining through economic and ecological restoration of abandoned mine lands (AMLs). EC collaborates with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to employ on-site monitoring of reclamation projects, which can be time and cost intensive. We aimed to assess the feasibility of incorporating remote sensing techniques to describe the impact of such projects on land use land cover (LULC), vegetation, runoff, and social vulnerability status. We used Landsat 4–5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) Earth observations to map changes in LULC, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and surface runoff. LULC analysis revealed forested land had the greatest increase in acreage from 1986 to 2023 within the Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna Watershed study area. Within EC’s holdings, we found NDVI and surface runoff reflected changes associated with known ecological and economic development sites. Variations in green-up time caused limitations in LULC and NDVI analyses, as land appeared more barren than reality. Additionally, our team conducted a social vulnerability analysis which investigated disadvantaged census tracts within the study area. We found that many of EC’s land holdings were within low-income census tracts that were not federally recognized as disadvantaged areas, despite meeting the criteria. Overall, our results show promise for pairing remote sensing and environmental justice data to support Earth Conservancy’s goals in addressing the diverse impacts of AML reclamation.