Attribute column definitions reflecting project data on all known mining activity and landscape changes within the Appalachian region of the Eastern United States (active, inactive, abandoned, and legacy surface mines)

We present a cheat sheet for users on all dataset columns for all project data provided in this data release. These data describe mining activity and landscape conditions for all known active, inactive, abandoned, and legacy surface mines in the Eastern United States Appalachian region to support monitoring and regulatory needs. These data include 1) a study area boundary, 2) a compiled set of spatial footprints for known mines from federal, state, academic research, and non-government organizations (extent of mining activity over time), 3) spatial subdivisions (subunits) of each mine footprint (based on the year of most probable vegetation loss since 1985), attributed with metrics to denote restoration status and recovery, 4) tabular attributes of subunits describing pre-European vegetation communities, annual surface conditions from remotely sensed vegetation indices (1985-2022), changes in land cover and land use types, and elevation changes, 5) tabular attributes of subunits describing the annual aggregated recovery metric and percent forest recovery, 6) areas mined within eJustice40 disadvantaged communities, and 7) eight raster datasets (30-meter spatial resolution) describing barren persistence, grassland persistence, and estimated planted year where trees exist after 1985.