In West Virginia, USA mining companies are trying to reach a thin layer of coal under the Appalachian Mountains. In order to manage this difficult task, these companies use a process called “mountaintop removal,” which might sound innocent enough and like a rather impressive feat. However, in reality they just use huge amounts of explosives to blow up the mountain tops, which seems like cheating. Besides destroying mountain tops, they are also massacring the region’s biodiversity by killing hundreds and thousands of living beings and making the areas’ rivers toxic.
Below NASA’s time-lapse shows mountaintop removal mining technique spreading in merely one county — Boone County, West Virginia — from 1984 to 2013.
