AN ASSESSMENT OF COAL RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR DEVELOPMENT
CENTRAL APPALACHIAN REGION
by
M. Devereux Carter and Nancy K. Gardner
U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 89-362
Assessments of the coal resources of the United States generally report the tonnage estimates only in terms of the location, bed thickness, overburden depth, and an estimate of the reliability of the measurements used. While this provides an important basic foundation, current Federal estimates of the Nation's coal resources may not account for many factors that could inhibit development of the coal, and, consequently, may be mistakenly optimistic for long-term policy planning purposes.
This report summarizes the results of studies in the first four 7.5-minute quadrangle areas of a continuing, cooperative assessment of the coal resources actually available for development in the coal fields of the Central Appalachian Region States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia (fig. 1). The subject studies will be referred to hereinafter as coal-availability studies, or program, and the overall study area as the Central Appalachian Region.
The coal-availability program was staked V 1987 with a pilot study in the Matewan 7.5-minute quadrangle, Pike County, Kentucky (fig.1), and was subsequently expanded in fiscal years (FY) 1988 and 1989 to include eight additional 7.5-minute quadrangle areas in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. A summary report on the second group of five studies will be completed soon after the end of FY 1989. All nine studies will have been conducted in cooperation with the geological surveys of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia; areas in Tennessee will be included in future studies.
The coal-availability program was developed to improve upon the quality and usefulness of previous coal-resource assessments (for example, Averitt, 1975) by estimating the location and amount of the remaining resource that might actually be available for development under current regulatory and general economic and technologic conditions. Development at this time means, for all practical purposes, surface (strip, auger) or underground (deep) mining; however, if other technologies for recovering coal or coal energy axe adopted in the near future, the results and methodology described herein will be applicable to them as well.
Coal-availability assessments require a large amount of detailed work at reasonably large map scales in order to produce meaningful results. The 7.5-minute quadrangle map (1:24,000 scale) area was selected for a variety of reasons that axe discussed in detail in the Methods section. In the Central Appalachian Region, each 7.5-minute quadrangle covers an area of about 59 square miles. The coal-availability assessment process is carried out by application of a geographic information system (GIS) of the USGS's National Coal Resources Data System (NCRDS) to each of the 7.5minute quadrangle study areas. Coal-availability assessments are produced by subtracting actual areas of coal beds that have been mined (and lost-in-mining) and areas affected by specified categories of regulatory and technologic restrictions to mining from estimated amounts and areas underlain by original in-place coal resources, on a bed-by-bed basis. The result provides the location as well as the amount of the estimated available coal resources in each study area insofar as regulatory prohibitions and technologic restrictions to mining axe, or can be, reflected in: 1) specific local laws and practices 2) coal-bed thickness, continuity, depth, and coal quality; 3) proximity of one coal bed to another and 4) reliability ability of original resource estimates.
As described, the coal-availability program would appear to require very large resources of time and funds in order to achieve the detail necessary to reliably predict coal availability for any given region. However, because of the methodology and procedures developed by the USGS in cooperation with the aforementioned State geological surveys (Eggleston and others, in preparation), only modest resources per study area are currently required for this work.
The current approach to the problem of the development of adequate detail in a cost-effective manner is to study a representative sample of 7.5-minute quadrangle areas within each major coal-bearing region in the conterminous -United States. The Central Appalachian Region was chosen as the first region for a test of the program because it contains the largest resources of low-sulfur coal in the eastern United States, the geology of the region is reasonably well known, and the Central Appalachian Region States of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia have a history of productive cooperation with the NCRDS. Through careful selection, it is currently estimated that only about 20, out of about 450, 7.5-minute quadrangle areas will have to be studied in the Central Appalachian Region in order to predict the availability of coal for development throughout the entire region. The problem of the extrapolation of individual study-area results is the subject of continuing research, however, and the current plan will be reevaluated after the first 15, or so, study areas have been completed.
The methodology and practices described do not identify "coal reserves" (ie., recoverable coal) in the strict sense. The coal availability program does not yet take into account the details of land and resource ownership, minimum mine sizes, mining methods, coal recoverability, or markets that would be required to identify "reserves". However, research is being conducted at the U.S.. Bureau of Mines (USBOM) in cooperation with the USGS, to develop a methodology to incorporate some or all of these "reserve identifying" factors into the coal-availability program at some future time. One major benefit of the GIS approach to this program is that it enables any study to be revised and/or updated as new data become available.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This report is the result of a multi-agency project that has included significant contributions by a number of persons in addition to those cited in the text and in the References Cited section.
Many of the NCRDS staff provided invaluable data entry, editing, and programming assistance. Noreen H. Rega, Paula M. Washington, and Sara L. Banks entered the stratigraphic data. Andre D. Bush processed the digitzed boundary files. Kathleen K. Krohn managed the data base aspects of the project. Margaret F. Johnson and Meng-Cherng Sun each made significant modifications to the NCRDS graphics programs that greatly enhanced the proficiency of the system. William G. Miller, manager of NCRDS, orchestrated the vital hardware, software, and telecommunications changes that allowed completion of this initial phase of the project within the required time frame and typeset the final text of this report.
Gerry Lebing and Sharon A. Harris of the USGS Information Systems Division provided frequent assistance in generating the graphic illustrations for this report.
Following the Matewan quadrangle pilot study (fig. 1), the ensuing three study areas (fig. 1) were accomplished through USGS-State cooperative agreements. Duleep I. Pandite and Robert D. Ashworth of the USGS Administrative Division are commended for so ably emplacing the cooperative agreements in an unusually short amount of time essential in getting the 1988 area studies underway.
Under the USGS-State cooperative agreements, the Principal Investigators of the State geologic agencies, James C. Cob of the Kentucky Geological Survey, Stanley S. Johnson of the Virginia Division of Mineral Resources, and Thomas R. Jake of the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey provided the essential link between the USGS and State project geologists. Under their leadership, the cooperative projects ran smoothly and the three new studies were completed on schedule. The highly competent and enthusiastic professionals of these agencies ensured the success of this project.
Special thanks go to Harold J. Gluskoter and Stanley P. Schweinfurth, USGS Branch of Coal Geology, for support throughout the project.
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