Welcome to West Virginia University!
West Virginia University is the state's land-grant institution. With over 30,000 students, WVU is a major part of West Virginia. The state is also known for its rich history in coal mining. Coal has a rich heritage in West Virginia and has contributed significantly to the progress and well-being of West Virginians since it was first discovered in what is now Boone County in 1742 by Peter Salley, more than a century before West Virginia became a state. The coal industry has played a major leadership role in the state’s economic, political, and social history. The industry has also been a center of controversy and the brunt of unfounded criticism, giving rise to battles in the arenas of labor, environment, and safety. Over the years, West Virginia has furnished our nation and the world with the finest bituminous coal found anywhere. And today, West Virginia’s coal miners apply efficient and effective mineral extraction technology that makes them the envy of their counterparts around the globe. West Virginia exports more coal than any other American state, has more longwall mining systems than any other state, leads the nation in underground coal production, and sets the pace for the rest of the industry in reclamation and environmental protection. At the same time, the West Virginia coal industry exhibits a sense of responsibility - social, health, safety, and environmental - that is unmatched anywhere in the world. This earthcache will bring you to the heart of the Evansdale Campus at WVU to explore the importance of coal to the mountain state.
What is Coal?
Coal is an organic sedimentary rock that forms from the accumulation and preservation of plant materials, usually in a swamp environment. Coal is a combustible rock and, along with oil and natural gas, it is one of the three most important fossil fuels. Coal has a wide range of uses; the most important use is for the generation of electricity.
How is Coal Formed?
Coal forms from the accumulation of plant debris, usually in a swamp environment. When a plant dies and falls into the swamp, the standing water of the swamp protects it from decay. Swamp waters are usually deficient in oxygen, which would react with the plant debris and cause it to decay. This lack of oxygen allows the plant debris to persist. In addition, insects and other organisms that might consume the plant debris on land do not survive well underwater in an oxygen-deficient environment.
To form the thick layer of plant debris required to produce a coal seam, the rate of plant debris accumulation must be greater than the rate of decay. Once a thick layer of plant debris is formed, it must be buried by sediments such as mud or sand. These are typically washed into the swamp by a flooding river. The weight of these materials compacts the plant debris and aids in its transformation into coal. About ten feet of plant debris will compact into just one foot of coal.
Plant debris accumulates very slowly. So, accumulating ten feet of plant debris will take a long time. The fifty feet of plant debris needed to make a five-foot thick coal seam would require thousands of years to accumulate. During that long time, the water level of the swamp must remain stable. If the water becomes too deep, the plants of the swamp will drown, and if the water cover is not maintained the plant debris will decay. To form a coal seam, the ideal conditions of perfect water depth must be maintained for a very long time.
If you are an astute reader you are probably wondering: "How can fifty feet of plant debris accumulate in water that is only a few feet deep?" The answer to that question is the primary reason that the formation of a coal seam is a highly unusual occurrence. It can only occur under one of two conditions: 1) a rising water level that perfectly keeps pace with the rate of plant debris accumulation; or, 2) a subsiding landscape that perfectly keeps pace with the rate of plant debris accumulation. Most coal seams are thought to have formed under condition #2 in a delta environment. On a delta, large amounts of river sediments are being deposited on a small area of Earth's crust, and the weight of those sediments causes subsidence.
For a coal seam to form, perfect conditions of plant debris accumulation and perfect conditions of subsidence must occur on a landscape that maintains this perfect balance for a very long time. It is easy to understand why the conditions for forming coal have occurred only a small number of times throughout Earth's history. The formation of coal requires the coincidence of highly improbable events.
Coal Fissility
Fresh coal is jet black. When exposed to weathering, tiny pyrite crystals found in many coals begin to oxidize. The sulfur in pyrite colors the coal with yellowish bands. The oxidized iron makes rust.
Coal often breaks into blocks because it develops two sets of intersecting fractures (called 'joints' in geology, 'cleats' in coal mining). Cleats are naturally occurring orthogonal joints in coal. They occur as two perpendicular sets of fractures. The dominant cleat is called the "face cleat." It is oriented parallel to the maximum horizontal compressive stress at the time of coalification when the cleats formed. The subordinate cleat called the “butt cleat,” forms at nearly right angles to the face cleat in the minimum stress orientation. In many cases, face-cleat orientation is similar to the orientation of other fractures in mine roofs, but this is not always the case. Cleat orientation commonly is related to local structural orientations in Appalachian and Midcontinent coalfields.
In geology, fissility is the ability or tendency of a rock to split along flat planes of weakness (“parting surfaces”). These planes of weakness are oriented parallel to stratification in sedimentary rocks. Fissility is differentiated from scaly fabric in hand samples by the parting surfaces’ continuously parallel orientations to each other and to stratification. Fissility is distinguished from scaly fabric in a thin section by the well-developed orientation of platy minerals such as mica. Fissility is the result of sedimentary or metamorphic processes.
In geology, a facies is a body of rock with specified characteristics, which can be any observable attribute of rocks such as their overall appearance, composition, or condition of formation, and the changes that may occur in those attributes over a geographic area. It is the sum total characteristics of a rock including its chemical, physical, and biological features that distinguishes it from the adjacent rock.
Talus is a term that refers to the accumulative rockfall at the base of a rock face or cliff. The degree of sameness in size, layering, and homogeny of the talus is referred to as sorting. Contributing rock that is irregularly fractured does not weather evenly and because it breaks off in large irregular pieces, contributes to a poorly sorted talus slope. The recognition and characterization of talus slopes are often important in determining the potential for mass movements (landslides, etc.). Movements occur whenever the talus slope exceeds the critical angle.
Coal In The Mountain State
It was coal that transformed West Virginia from a frontier state to an industrial state. Coal in 62 recoverable seams can be found in 43 of the state’s 55 counties. Knowledge of the coal reserves in western Virginia predated the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson reported in his Notes on the State of Virginia that coal underlay most of the trans- Allegheny Ohio Valley. Jefferson’s neighbor, John Peter Salley, traced huge deposits of bituminous coal along with the Coal and Kanawha Rivers in the mid-eighteenth century, but there was little demand for the mineral outside of local use in iron forges and blacksmith shops.
The first widespread use of West Virginia coal began when the saltworks along the Kanawha River expanded dramatically in the decades before the Civil War. Coal was used to heat the brine pumped from salt beds underneath the river. That modest use soon was dwarfed by the demands of a growing nation that looked to coal to heat its homes, power its factories, and fuel its locomotives and steamships. When the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania no longer could provide the tonnage needed, American industrialists discovered the massive coalfields of West Virginia. Large-scale investment soon opened the remote valleys along the New, Bluestone, Tug, Monongahela, and Guyandotte rivers.
Logging Requirements
To obtain credit for this earthcache, you will need to visit Mylan Puskar Stadium and send me a message with the two answers before logging this earthcache.
Mountaineer Stadium (N 39° 39.108 W 79° 57.290)
1. Examine the evidence of coal at Ground Zero. Are there joints or cleats? Describe the fissility.
2. Estimate the size (length, width, height) of the body of coal.
OPTIONAL: Take a picture of yourself at the location and attach it with your log. Be sure not to reveal too much of the formations to avoid giving away the answers.