Comparing Hydrologic Response Times Between a Forested and Mountaintop Mined Catchment

Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) represents the largest land cover/landuse change in the Central Appalachian region. By 2012, the U.S. EPA estimates that MTR will have impacted approximately 6.8% of the predominately forested Appalachian Coalfield region of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia with nearly 4,000 miles of headwater streams buried under valley fills. In spite of the scale and extent of MTR, its hydrologic impacts are poorly understood. While MTR has a well-established pattern of downstream water quality degradation, its effect on the quantity and timing of catchment runoff is less clear. Several devastating floods in the region have been attributed to MTR, but there is little evidence to either confirm or refute this belief. Existing research has focused on statistical analysis of catchment outlet responses, but results from these studies only offer evidence of differences in hydrologic behavior, not process understanding of how the system is changing. This study begins to address that research gap by exploring differences in hydrologic response times, a fundamental hydraulic parameter that controls the conversion of rainfall to runoff. A simple rainfall-runoff model was used to quantify differences in response times for storm events in a mined and predominantly forested catchment. Results showed that the mountaintop mined catchment responded more quickly to storm events than the forested catchment. The mined catchment also showed more variability in response time than the forested catchment. These patterns repeated using multiple model structures. The more rapid response of the mined catchment is likely attributed to increased impervious surface, preferential flow paths within valley fills that rapidly route water to the stream, or rapid displacement of water stored in valley fills upon the onset of rain. However, further research using tools such as isotope tracers is needed to offer insight about the processes responsible for streamflow generation. Future research on the hydrologic impacts of MTR should focus on the process level to elucidate changes within catchment hydrology that can be used to explain changes at larger scales.