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
Chapter 3 - STUDY AREAS
The four study areas (fig. 1) were selected to be representative of the topography geology, culture, and mining practices of their respective localities. All have large coal resources and major active mining operations. The Matewan 7.5-minute quadrangle in Pike County, Kentucky, was the pilot-study area jointly studied by the Kentucky Geological Survey and the USGS; detailed results are presented in Carter and others (in preparation). Approximately 10 percent of the Matewan quadrangle lies in West Virginia, and that part was excluded in the Matewan study. The Noble quadrangle, Breathitt, Perry, and Knott Counties, Kentucky, was assessed by the Kentucky Geological Survey; detailed results are documented in Sergeant and others, 1988. The Sylvester quadrangle, Boone and Kanawha Counties, West Virginia, was assessed by the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey; detailed results are reported in Blake and Fedorko, 1988. The Vansant quadrangle, Buchanan County, Virginia, was studied by the Virginia Division of Mineral Resources; detailed results are in Campbell and Sites, 1988.
All four quadrangles are rural areas with rugged, deeply dissected terrain characteristic of the Central Appalachian Region. Surface-mining practices in the region include contour, mountaintop removal, and angering. Deep-mining practices include room-and-pillar and long wall. All of the coal beds occur in rocks of Early and Middle Pennsylvanian age (fig. 2). The coal-bearing sections range from 800 to 2,600 feet in thickness and contain 10 to 21 potentially minable coal beds. Interburden thicknesses vary from 10 to 350 feet. Most coal beds occur higher than the valley bottoms so that surface and underground drift mines predominate, except in the Vansant quadrangle where most of the mining is from shaft mines in the subsurface Pocahontas No. 3 coal bed.
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