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 PLOS One 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. 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.