Surface mining in Appalachia disrupts large areas of forested land. Federal and state laws require disturbed lands be reclaimed by re-constructing the landscape and replacing soil materials to provide a rooting medium. If insufficient quantities of native topsoil are available, substitute materials derived from the overburden may be used as soil media. This study examined soil and foliar nutrie...

-Polydiapirs (domes-in-domes) result from the evolution of a multiwavelength Rayleigh-Taylor (gravitational) instability. The present work investigates the initiation and development of polydiapirs by means of two-dimensional finite-difference models of gravitationally unstable triple-layered sequences of Newtonian fluids. The values of viscosities, thicknesses and densities were systematically...

Through-the-Earth (TTE) communication systems require minimal infrastructure to operate. Hence, they are assumed to be more survivable and more conventional than other underground mine communications systems. This survivability is a major advantage for TTE systems. In 2006, Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER Act), which requires all underground coal mines...

[1] This study deals with deformation of small pores in wet soils of relatively high bulk density such as in the final settlement phase of tilled or disturbed soils. Pore deformation was modeled by volume reduction of spherical voids embedded in a homogenous soil matrix. External constant stress and overburden were considered as steady stresses because the change in interaggregate contact stres...

Traditionally, the Marchenko equation forms a basis for 1D inverse scattering problems. A 3D extension of the Marchenko equation enables the retrieval of the Green’s response to a virtual source in the subsurface from reflection measurements at the earth’s surface. This constitutes an important step beyond seismic interferometry. Whereas seismic interferometry requires a receiver at the positio...

The properties of fluids saturating rocks depend strongly on temperature and pressure. Therefore, ambient laboratory conditions may not be desirable for the investigation of fluids in reservoir rocks. To mimic the reservoir, a pressurized and temperature controlled (overburden) cell, compatible with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), was assembled within a 2 MHz NMR Rock Core Analyzer. 1D NMR re...

Building accurate interval velocity models is critically important for seismic imaging and amplitude inversion. Here, we adapt the so-called “PP+PS=SS” method to devise an exact technique for constructing the interval traveltime-offset function in a target zone beneath a horizontally layered overburden. The algorithm is designed for arbitrarily anisotropic target layers, but the overburden is a...

Siderite (FeCO3) is commonly found in coal overburden and, when present, can cause interference in the determination of neutralization potential (NP). Under acidic testing conditions, FeCO3 reacts to neutralize acid, which contributes to the NP. However, continued weathering of FeCO3 (oxidation of Fe 21 and hydrolysis of Fe) produces a neutral to slightly acidic solution. The effects of hydroge...