Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Geosciences Theses Department of Geosciences 5-8-2020 A Paired-catchment Approach for Characterizing Hydrologic Response to Mountaintop Mining Elinor A. Sattler Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/geosciences_theses Recommended Citation Sattler, Elinor A., "A Paired-catchment Approach for Characterizing Hydrologic Response to Mountaintop Mining." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2020. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/geosciences_theses/142 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Geosciences at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Geosciences Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A PAIRED-CATCHMENT APPROACH FOR CHARACTERIZING HYDROLOGIC RESPONSE TO MOUNTAINTOP MINING by ELINOR SATTLER Under the Direction of Richard Milligan, PhD ABSTRACT This study examined six large-scale watersheds divided into three pairs (mined and unmined), leveraging streamflow and mining permit datasets from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP), to develop a novel high- resolution time series of five decades of surface mining and valley fill activity for each watershed. Streamflow metrics were evaluated for trends and any correlation with mining permit history. Both mined and unmined watersheds experienced little or no change in annual flow. Mined watersheds exhibited significant decreasing trends in maximum flow and significant increasing trends in minimum flow, and these metrics were significantly correlated with mining permit history. No effect of mining cover on runoff ratio (Q/P) was found for any watershed. Future work should differentiate mining from other land-use/land-change disturbances in each watershed and expand on the mining permit histories developed in this study. INDEX WORDS: Hydrology, Streamflow, SFM/VF, Paired watershed, Trend analysis, Land use change A PAIRED-CATCHMENT APPROACH FOR CHARACTERIZING HYDROLOGIC RESPONSE TO MOUNTAINTOP MINING by ELINOR SATTLER A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2020 Copyright by Elinor Sattler 2020 A PAIRED-CATCHMENT APPROACH FOR CHARACTERIZING HYDROLOGIC RESPONSE TO MOUNTAINTOP MINING by ELINOR SATTLER Committee Chair: Richard Milligan Committee: Richard Milligan Jeremy Diem Luke Pangle Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Services College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2020 iv DEDICATION This is dedicated to the Kalapooia River and Michael. This would never have happened without either of you. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to everyone that supported me through this, many of whom will never see this but are appreciated. Thanks to my adviser, Dr. Milligan, for endless patience and guidance, and my committee, Dr. Diem and Dr. Pangle, for helping me to get better at writing science and doing science. Thank you to Dr. Price for pointing me at hydrology. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. V LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... IX LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... X LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................... XII 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Surface mining and valley fill ............................................................................. 1 1.2 Long-term hydrological impacts of land use conversion ................................. 3 1.3 Inconsistent quality of available SFM/VF data ................................................ 5 1.4 Large-scale watersheds ....................................................................................... 6 1.5 Paired-catchment studies .................................................................................... 7 1.6 Research questions and objectives ..................................................................... 7 2 STUDY REGIONS ..................................................................................................... 9 2.1 USGS 3198500 Big Coal River at Ashford, WV ............................................. 10 2.2 USGS 3203600 Guyandotte River at Logan, WV........................................... 11 2.3 USGS 3192000 Gauley River Above Belva, WV ............................................ 13 2.4 USGS 3051000 Tygart Valley River at Belington .......................................... 14 2.5 USGS 3054500 Tygart Valley River at Philippi, WV .................................... 16 2.6 USGS 3183500 Greenbrier River at Alderson, WV ....................................... 17 3 METHODS ................................................................................................................ 19 vii 3.1 Preliminary characterization of streamgages for pairing ............................. 19 3.2 Refinement of characterization ........................................................................ 19 3.3 Calculating watershed permit areas ................................................................ 19 3.4 Creating paired watersheds ............................................................................. 21 3.5 Compiling mining history timeseries ............................................................... 21 3.6 Annual metrics and statistical analysis ........................................................... 22 4 RESULTS .................................................................................................................. 24 4.1 Characterization of streamgages and watersheds .......................................... 24 4.2 Pairing of watersheds ........................................................................................ 27 4.3 Mining permit history timeseries ..................................................................... 29 4.4 Annual hydrologic metrics for paired watersheds ......................................... 30 4.4.1 Average annual daily flow ............................................................................ 31 4.4.2 Minimum daily flow ...................................................................................... 32 4.4.3 Maximum daily flow ..................................................................................... 33 4.4.4 25th percentile ................................................................................................ 34 4.4.5 75th percentile ................................................................................................ 35 4.4.6 Interquartile .................................................................................................. 35 4.4.7 Runoff ratios and mining permit history ..................................................... 36 4.5 Statistical analysis of paired watersheds ......................................................... 37 5 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................ 41 viii 6 CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 45 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 47 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................. 52 Appendix A .................................................................................................................. 52 Appendix A.1 Lifetime hydrologic metrics .............................................................. 52 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Final streamgage/watershed pairing candidates. ............................................................. 26 Table 2 Final 6 streamgages chosen for pairing. .......................................................................... 27 Table 3 Mann-Whitney U test values. .......................................................................................... 39 Table 4 Kendall's tau-b nonparametric test ................................................................................... 40 Table 5 Pearson correlation test for mining history and each hydrologic metric. ........................ 40 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 West Virginia and paired watersheds ............................................................................... 9 Figure 2 USGS 3198500 Big Coal River at Ashford, WV ........................................................... 10 Figure 3 USGS 3203600 Guyandotte River at Logan, WV.......................................................... 12 Figure 4 USGS 3192000 Gauley River Above Belva, WV .......................................................... 13 Figure 5 USGS 3051000 Tygart Valley River at Belington, WV ................................................ 15 Figure 6 USGS 3054500 Tygart Valley River at Philippi, WV ................................................... 16 Figure 7 USGS 3183500 Greenbrier River at Alderson, WV ...................................................... 18 Figure