Mapping the yearly extent of surface coal mining in Central Appalachia using Landsat and Google Earth Engine — Yearly Mining Areas (KML)

These data accompany the 2018 manuscript published in <i>PLOS One</i> titled "Mapping the yearly extent of surface coal mining in Central Appalachia using Landsat and Google Earth Engine". In this manuscript, researchers used the Google Earth Engine platform and freely-accessible Landsat imagery to create a yearly dataset (1985 through 2015) of surface coal mining in the Appalachian region of the United States of America. <br>This specific dataset is a collection of KML files of the mining areas as determined by this study for each year from 1985 through 2015. Individual file names within the dataset indicate the specific year. These files show the mining “footprint” in Appalachia for that given year, indicating that mining was occurring in a given location during that year. These files do not, however, indicate the year at which mining began or ceased in any given location.

本数据集配套发表于2018年《公共科学图书馆·综合》（PLOS One）的学术论文，论文标题为《利用陆地卫星（Landsat）与谷歌地球引擎（Google Earth Engine）绘制阿巴拉契亚中部露天煤矿开采年度范围》。在该研究中，研究者依托谷歌地球引擎平台与公开可获取的陆地卫星影像，构建了1985年至2015年美国阿巴拉契亚地区露天煤矿开采的年度数据集。
本数据集包含本研究划定的1985年至2015年各年度矿区KML（Keyhole Markup Language）文件集合，数据集内的单个文件名即标注了对应年份。此类文件展示了对应年度阿巴拉契亚地区的采矿“足迹”，即该年度特定区域存在采矿活动的范围。但此类文件无法反映任意区域采矿活动的起始或终止年份。