GIS 4930: Special Topics; Project 2 - MTR Prep

The next few weeks will be spent looking at Special Applications in GIS that can be used to analyze mountain top removal (MTR). MTR and valley filling are a common practice most particularly dealing with coal mining. The Appalachian Mountain chain in the mis-eastern United States is an area that is particularly affected with this form of mining.  The mining essentially involves peeling away the surface of the earth including trees, brush, soil to get at the rocky layer beneath to harvest away the precious coal. This is the premise of the project throughout the next few weeks. The first part of week's assignment was to create a basemap for the study area that I will be exploring during these next few weeks. The project as both an individual and group component.  Deliverables, like the basemap shown below, still have to be done independently. However, much of the upcoming analysis will be broken down into manageable chunks to be completed in groups resulting in a final group presentation. 
The basemap below provides an overview of the study area, and displays the DEM, streams, and basin for Group 1, which is the group I have chosen to work with.  Many things have been done to the original DEM layer to show the elevation, streams, and basins as shown below.  Essentially, a mosaic raster was made out of 4 DEM sections, which was then clipped to the study area.  From there, multiple tools were applied to the mosaic to generate the streams and basins. Using the Fill tool, I was able to fill the holes in the pixel database.  This makes it so when running a subsequent flow analysis, there aren't holes for the "flowing water" to go into.  Flow direction is applied to see how and where water would or should move given the overall contours of the elevation slopes.  From there, a calculation is ran to determine what actually correlates to a running stream.  This calculation funnels into a conditional statement tool identifying areas that should be streams.  Finally, a feature class is created from that entire process and then displayed appropriately.  
We were also asked to create a Map Story, which displays the six stages of mountaintop removal. We were also asked to create a Story Map Journal, which is the building blocks in progress towards a final compilation for the project.