Mapping the yearly extent of surface coal mining in Central Appalachia using Landsat and Google Earth Engine — Processing Mask (GeoTIFF)

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 GeoTIFF file of the processing mask. This mask omits land uses/covers including urban areas, roads, and rivers from the mine delineation analysis. The mask is based off various datasets from 2015.