Time-Lapse Shows Mountaintop Mining Depleting Forests Over 25-Year Period (VIDEO)

Time-Lapse Shows Mountaintop Mining Depleting Forests Over 25-Year Period (VIDEO)

A series of satellite views of a Boone County, West Virginia coal mine in the Appalachian Mountains, taken from 1984 to 2009, offer scientists much-needed perspective on the depletion of the area's forests, National Geographic reported. The photos, taken by NASA's Landsat 5 satellite, illustrate the extensive damage mountaintop mining has done to the area's forests over the 25-year period.

Coal companies are required to put the land back the way they found it, which they do by putting soil back onto the sites and planting trees. However, according to Margaret Palmer, director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science, this quick fix is not really a fix at all.

Palmer told National Geographic that the soil that is put back on the site is so stripped of nutrients that it would take 2,000 years for the ecosystem to return to its natural state.

WATCH a time-lapse video of NASA's photos:

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