I'm a geologist that grew up just a few miles of that area, near some of the other furnaces in Botetourt (thank you for pronouncing the county correctly, that was a breath of fresh air lol). most of the furnaces and mines were related to the Civil War, producing iron for military purposes, but the quality of the ore and iron produced wasn't high enough, nor was the yield, to make them viable as the industry really went into full swing, to keep them open. Plus, That post-bellum period up to the turn of the cemtury saw the timber industry in that part of the world take off and become more economically viable, and all taken together kind of ended the iron production in Rockbridge and Botetourt. Very interesting video.
I went to those furnaces a few years back with a friend from the area (Daleville) . There was a hiking trail and waterfall nearby , can't remember the exact place names. One of my favorite things to do is go up to paddle the james river , such a beautiful state we live in.
@@TheGeoModels I realize this question wasn’t meant for me but are any of the tunnels open at that old mine? I’ve driven past it hundreds of times trail riding but have never stopped. Thanks
Great presentation. There's an area in a town a few miles from me like this. They removed the toe of the mountain from mining. There's a huge slump area and crack on the mountain. I told my friend, the Sheriff, if that slides on down, Virginia City could have a chain reaction from all the abandoned silver mines under the town collapsing. At minimum, it would make a noise that would even scare off the ghosts - lol.
I have wondered how prevalent big but subtle movements like this are. I guess you can actually see them in a drier place without trees everywhere! Most Appalachian slopes that experience large but deep, gradual movement appear to be susceptible to just that--large and slow movement. Plenty of huge slope failures have a stream eroding their toe, and they just creep along. I'm not sure if there is enough potential energy in the landscape to make more rapid large, deep failures, but nobody would want to find out, either. I was recently told about a bridge piling with anchors going 80 ft deep that was moving peacefully along on top of a huge landslide. The slide was apparently 115 ft deep.
@TheGeoModels not sure if this will work on here. If it does, it's on Google maps, horseshoe shaped above the open pit mine. Very deep and obvious from the ground. 39°18'10"N 119°39'25"W
I wonder if the rain saturation like what Helene put on WV and NC would make a full-fledged HUGE land and debris slide that would make Helene’s look like a tiny little landslide…
I've had relatives who worked in mines in Virginia and West Virginia tell me that they hollowed out entire mountains in some places. They said the only thing holding the mountain up was the wood timbers.
@@TheGeoModels Ah, well, there was an old gas pipeline that was put in back in the 40s(?). It was gonna get replaced so we were doing a depth to bedrock study to see where competent bedrock started. Basically they needed to know where they could blast or just use a dozer. Some areas we did them in, I don't know how you would get a dozer back there. Also, carrying a car battery up or down those slopes was not fun. Also, those adits sound dangerous. I don't know if the Virginia Survey has closed them off, but a buddy of mine and I explored some old small mines around Dadeville, Alabama which were not marked or closed off, but abandoned. If you fell down into one of those, you're not coming back out. I have a video of one where we dropped a GoPro down in one. If you look closely towards the end, you can see deer bones at the bottom. Don't wander the woods at night.
There are also limestone mines in this area. There were "bubbles" of limestone which formed under the slate and sand stone. These were mined out for use in the iron production. I was last in one near Lowmore in the sixties. If I remember correctly it was probably 70 feet tall and several hundred feet in diameter. Most of the old furnaces have been destroyed. They were down by the river across I-64 from where the hospital now stands. The mines at Iron Gate supplied the iron plate armor for the Merrimac. It was forged there in the gorge and shipped to the shipyard in Portsmouth on bateaus down the James River. That was the story I was told by some of the old timers. I lived and worked here during the construction of I-64.
Being born and raised in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky near Black Mountain and having worked in the coal mines of Appalachia including Kentucky and Alabama, I did not know about the geology of those mountains south and east of the coal field. Thanks for educating me and presenting such a nice video.
My cabin is on the side of a hill that had the mountaintop removed for strip-mining about 40 years ago. I haven't seen any evidence of the back-filled soil moving, but it may just be too slow to notice.
I did a lot of different things in a 41 1/2 year career in geology, including going back to school in geography to qualify as a gis analyst. Ultimately I got to do field mapping, then about half way through lidar became available. I started doing my own processing and immediately realized that the work I had finished the years before had suddenly become obsolete!
Sucks, but a lot of folks jobs became obsolete due to technology. But it was important work when we didn't have the tech, so we thank you all the same.
It upon shoulders such as yours we all need help to stand on. We all move through the same. Even with the new, the knowledge from before is so valuable. So many skills are lost when new things come forward. AI is coming next. It will never replace a human being. Thank you.
p.s. Lord help us all if we had no electricity and computer data is lost. Not many have a backup paper trail nor do they know how to do it without the computers. There should always be a water proof, fireproof storage to maintain current records. Hospitals, grid, gas, water, electric, grocery tag, ect.
Very interesting. South West Virginia and north east TN have a history of iron mining as well. It would be cool to see a LiDAR perspective of those mountains too.
There's a little bit of it in the ancient impact westward growth of America vid on here. It's about Cumberland Gap. Awesome area, and Pine and Cumberland Mountain are incredible with lidar.
It's amazing to me what the lidar reveals about the geography under the vegetation of the tree canopy. I had no idea that iron mining took place in Virginia in addition to coal mining. It makes sense because iron ore was being extracted from the ground way back along this mountain system up through Pennsylvania along with coal as well which fed the early steel industry of Pittsburgh.
I grew up in central West Virginia where a great deal of strip mining took place in the 1930s and 40s. I used to roam those hills above the strip mines and found many such slip faults, where the top of the mountain had become unstable. This was in the 1960s so it must be much worse by now. There are few people living directly near the strip mines but those who are, in Brooklyn and other such places, may be in great danger. Since the underground mines have closed, in the late 20th century, water has stopped being pumped from the mines so many springs have returned, weakening the rock structure even more. Nothing can be done about the slippage but what can be done to warn the people way back in the Hollars?
Once the slope shifts it's mostly stable again. It would take hundreds, maybe thousands of years for springwater to erode enough material for a major slip. Nature works at her own pace that mortal hands don't really understand. I'd say the hollers are safe. Worry more about the suits that owned these mines living in concrete, foodless cities.
Very cool! My great grandparents lived in Covington & I spent a lot of my Summer's up there while growing up in the 80's & early 90's. Would swim in the creek at Humpback Bridge which was actually owned by my family way back when. My grandfather's parents are buried in Low Moor. I love those mountains! Very interesting to see them in a different perspective!
They are something else. When you look at them with this sort of digital topography there are lots of "humpback" looking features. Big Hill on 220 is particularly interesting. Low Moor is really cool from the standpoint of landscape evolution--the river has some old terraces and meander cut-offs way up in town. You could find "river jack" cobbles way up on the hills today and wonder how on earth they got up there.
My dad is from the western side of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His father was a coal miner. The mines are pretty much closed, and the collapsed mines have become small lakes.
I am from Alleghany county and they talked about the side of the mountain in iron gate sliding down into the river creating a dam. If that happened, Clifton forge and Covington would flood almost immediately.
I came too late for Lidar and really enjoy your videos. I was limited to ground studies and 3D studies of aerial photos with mirror stereoscopes. One factor to consider in slope failure of folded strata is bedding plane movements during folding that shear off irregularities in weaker interbeds, creating planes with very low friction coefficients and low if any cohesion (some recementation after folding may occur. Birmingham Alabama has major problems with block slides that require very little to mobilize when toe removal occurs. At one site, a slab about six feet thick started sliding downslope during construction by removal of a small amount at the toe. I walked on the moving slide as it downhill, pushing into the flat floor of the larger cut. It was a claystone layer within a larger stack of interbedded sandstones and shales. We also reactivated a paleolandslide in a wind gap where a creek had cut through the ridge (Red Mtn). Removed about ten feet of material from the toe of this old unrecognized slide to use the weight the toe of the downdip sliding block elsewhere on the site. This allowed the eroded old slide to begin sliding again on its old failure arc that was perpendicular to the strike. Consider that there may be planes at residual strength due to folding or older terrrain modifications.
Interesting presentation, could there be a correlation between any situations like this and the disaster that just happened further south in the Appalachians? Seems like heavy rains could be a catalyst for collapses like these.
They would help it along, and these huge slides might have moved a bit more during particularly wet periods. Helene-type events cause lots of debris flows, which are fluidized slides that are extremely dangerous. I'll do some videos about it. I work in that region producing landslide hazard maps. The mountains are absolutely covered with scars from slides that happened during past floods. Folks alive today haven't seen one like Helene, but it's certainly not the region's first, and won't be its last.
Giles county would be an awesome place to look at we border war Virginia and have the New River and Helene literally caused the 100 year flood, were a crater no matter which way ya go out of town ya gotta go over a mntn we din have older mines and I think in Newport area towards Newcastle I saw a furnace it was HUGE amazing to see it and think about that time period and how they made stuff love this stuff@@TheGeoModels
Also during Helene I feel like we were sooo lucky to not have more damage like n.c. but the rain did poor but we were super dry too and haven't had but a drizzle ever since so we're dry again and when it pours as ground is dry water has no where to go the new river flooded but our creeks didn't, been kinda sad really creeks been low all summer I couldn't even kayak the creek cause I only go when u don't have to get out of ur kayaks a hundred times and walk the rapids I like to go when water is up and can barely see the rocks but anyway glad I came across ur video it be cool to check out Giles, the town of narrows and folks along the river got he worst of it due to flooding think 46 families lost their homes all along the river so sad always been told by local folklore the natives called the new river the river of death kinda freaky thoughts came to my mind when Helene hit
I love your presentation. I have absolutely no clue about anything concerning geology but I found your video fascinating and learned a lot from it. Thank you for the opportunity to learn something new today. 😁
Fascinating. I would love to see more of this, particularly headed down towards SW VA. There is fascinating mining history in Wythe County and the surrounding area, particularly in the area known as the Lead Mines. There was also extensive mining for iron dating back to the colonial era. Thank you. Great video.
quick question! how does one get ahold of this LIDAR data? im always exploring the area near suh arkansas ( a old zinc mining town) and am interested in trying to see through the tree tops to find areas to document, Is this public data or how would one go about\ acquiring and viewing this data
I grew up in appalachia and we lived back behind an 1800s era coal mine, I explored it and the whole place was held up by timber and many sections were less then 3ft tall. Many sections caved in, but the main passages were pretty much intact.
Thank you for your presentation! There have been recent terrestrial landslides that have impacted thousands of people, but your presentation is showing creepy similarities to some of the larger historic landslips. Can this be called geochemical faulting? Thank you for your work!
Economics. The ore isn't exceptionally high grade, and it occurs in discontinuous seams that are tilted, so how much is easily available from the ground surface is variable and not exceptionally high. It can't compete with iron resources likes those around the Great Lakes, which are geologically very different.
There are a couple iron works in the Woodbridge and Occoquan areas. Most neglected and lost. There is some information on the Neabsco Iron Works. I heard that in one of the clover leaves of I-95 is a furnace. I believe it's the Woodbridge exit but might be the Dale city. I'm guessing that ore might have come here for processing. Perhaps down the Shenandoah river to the Potomac river? There is a lot of red clay from the Shenandoah valley to the Chesapeake bay.
Good pronunciation of Botetourt . That mine at Low Moor actually has a cave in the back that beelines toward another cave in the area. They almost connect but in the upper dev of the passages. A little spicy closer to the surface in that area
I’m from Grundy Va they have deep mined striped mine this place to death there are still a few mines left buch 1 is a huge shaft mine they put out about 10 million tons of coal a year or did I haven’t checked in a while.
It is on The National Map Viewer hosted by the USGS. Just Google for it. When the viewer opens, you have to select the Hillshade layer from the drop down menu. The Layer drop down is like a little stack of plates or cards or whatever. Select hillshade, and you can see a lot. They don't have slope shade, so the northwest ridges are bright, but it's still awesome.
I guess it's nice to ground-truth features, but the lidar is def a game changer. Lots of structural geology work in Appalachia is legitimately better done with lidar, at least from a qualitative standpoint in heavily forested areas
@@TheGeoModels From a practical standpoint as well, I expect in some hollows and low points you might have trouble getting enough satellite fixes to achieve much with GPS. I presume your LiDAR work doesn't require soaking in DEET and other bug juices and you can wear flipflops. But as a bonus being in the outdoors would you get much of a suntan now maneuvering under and through those trees and bush, so maybe low SPF suffices?
No, those are from deeper down in the Earth where more stress can accumulate and then slip loose. Most are a few miles deep, though some are only a couple of miles. The slides in this video still aren't too big in the greater scheme of things, and they probably didn't move all at once...I'd actually be interested to know! Check out Rattlesnake Mountain in Washington State; it's a recent landslide sort of like the ones in the vid. It moved over a period of time--it was fast geologically, but was still a slow process. Eastern North America has some tectonic stress on it. It's not huge, but there's enough there to make the Earth's crust slip and budge now and then. The fact that the Appalachians have so many old geologic structures in them allows the crust places to slip.
Great video, thanks. Just a quick question. Any guess as to the "speed" of the settling? Slow shifting over time or staggered sudden shifts? I know the sand model is quick, but geology usually isn't. 🙂
Two Questions - Is there a resource we can see LIDAR maps of the US? And How do road cuts effect this type of rock movement? Are some roads less safe because they were cut through unstable rock before we knew better?? I-40 in Western NC???
Roadway cuts can be (and are) reinforced with driven steel piles after the fact if needed. They'll blow a large grid of bore holes hundreds of feet deep and drive giant steel piles into the face of the cut. Oftentimes the heads of the piles are used to install steel netting to catch loose rock before it falls to the highway--you see this more in the Rockies, but there's places in Appalachia where you can see it too (usually in Appalachia the piles are buried under strapped topsoil). This reinforces the slope against slippage and protects who or whatever is downslope from boulders and rocks falling from erosion. Short answer is if we find unstable faces we cut through eons ago, we don't just wait for it to fail. There's remedies. Look up "Slope Engineering for Mountain Roads" if this kind of thing interests you.
What is the time-scale of these slope 'lurches' or movements? Did this happen all in one sudden shift as your physical model shows, or did this happen very slowly over time? Would this have happened as they were working?
probably slow. I haven’t seen it documented, but the movements aren’t huge, either. my guess is that they were starting during work, and were slow, and have continued slowly. a wet period might give you a big lurch
No mining of this scale out there...the Helene stuff is a product of extreme rainfall, existing geology, and (lots of times) road embankments. I've already seen a large number of failures that got started where a road embankment was developed on a slope. In that sense, human constructions contributed to them, but it was the extreme rain that actually made them happen. Trying to do a Helene video or two here shortly.
@@TheGeoModels thank you for responding so quickly. Your synopsis is what I was thinking, I’m familiar with the large minds around me Spruce Pine for example. Today is my first day out to help a friend whose road just got rebuilt and access is available some power poles down no power he has Starlink and propane generator. i’m going to attach a map of where I’m going. Let me know if I could help with the field research. Brian
I am going to Newberry Creek Road out of old Fort North Carolina. I had a map drawn no option to attach or paste. Blue Ridge Parkway is above him. 3000 feet elevation difference.
There is one in Botetourt that is a park with the workings of making steel for cannons circa civil war. There are historical placards explaining everything.
New Jersey has over 100 mines and forge sites dating from colonial times. During the American Revolution 79 forges operated at the same, producing cannons for Washington. The Franklin stoves were mostly forged in New Jersey. The sites are in the Highlands area, in similar geology, but not as high or steep. However, this is at the toe of the glaciated region and the land is still responding to the removal of the glacial ice 17,000 years ago. Is there any similar activity outside of Appalachia, especially in New Jersey?
a ridge in Washington state next to the city of Yakima started to have a very slow landslide over the course of a decade that looks a lot like this and was definitely caused by the extensive gravel mining done to the base of the ridge.
Nice video! I grew up on the Appalachians in VA, I have memory's of walking on the sandstone and shale mix. I never realized there was a chemical reaction, amazing.
I live along I64 between two of the sites in your video (specifically where i81 and i64 merge). Most of the houses here have foundation issues including mine. Also Radon.
I’m in botetourt county all the time, I knew there were old mining roads and remnants all over the area but I had no idea it was right there in the heart.
Very interesting, especially to someone who knows nothing about this. Your explanations are excellent. I'm curious if you have done any study of the area around Johnstown, Pa, and the big floods there. My hometown.
This is the same principal that caused the mudslides in NC during Helene. Land disturbance for whatever reason like building a home & barn plus inordinate amounts of water led to disaster.
Thanks this was very informative and relaxing to watch. I'm from the Unicoi/Erwin TN area. Use to live 3 miles from the NC border off TN395, I moved last year on up into the mountains. Alot of sand stone here mixed with some coal, bought a nice part of the mountain here, I'd never live anywhere else.
i'm unaware of any coal within those mountains. I thought they are far too old to have coal. They rose before life even existed on land somewhere around 500mya.
I wish lidar was available to view online for free. There are some type of mines down the road from me and have always wanted to see the lidar around here. They don't even have a paved road down in that section. No one dares build a house either.
Do you think the loud booms we are hearing has something to do with this? Everybody heard loud booms all over the tricities and south west virginia last night.
They're called mining breaks here in eastern KY and western VA I worked in deep mine not stripped mine and 8t would fall in so high while pilling that they had to take sheets of metal and lay over them outside on top of the cracks to keep it from flooding us out when it rained hard I ve seemed it fall to tree roots came in we had lots of coverage our mine was under high mountains I loved working on a pillar section the last one was nine years I'm retired now but I miss it
Interesting - and a nice viewing tool as well. I see similar structures in the hill sides of South Wales that I always assumed the results of ancient faults, post glaciation adjustments and mining. After watching this I suspect mining and quarrying was the predominant reason.
On the last mine, the drifts drive towards that depression, under the depression, at the bottom of the slope you can see what might be another adit or haulage tunnel, I propose that a stope was formed under the depression and material was passed down or hauled through the higher admits, either way that stope if it's there, could it have collapsed and caused that depression on the top of the mountain?
This stuff is great, been through the area a few times, would never have known about iron mines, really what people did for a living in the area. Perhaps the high wall is recognizable? Do a fair amount of hiking, and you do see artifacts, some sort of pits, if nothing else old roads going into the hills, mining? lumber? and this will give me another thing to think about when I see stuff. Now that I think about it there are some exhibits up in the Catoctin Mountains (MD) for furnaces and pig iron.
Ok, so I am looking to buy land in WVa to start a homestead. Am I going to create a problem like this by excavating a small root celler into the rocky hillside? What should I look for to ensure my future property isn't going to slide into the next landowners boundaries? Is there public record of these mining operations thar I can use to research property for sale. Some of these parcels are large enough that I may never see every square foot of what I own and may not see there was a former mining operation.
With hurricane Helene recently eroding material from so many creek beds (similar to mining the toes of hillsides), how long before we should expect slumps and slides of the hills above?
I'm not into geology but anything historical in VA is interesting to me, (as the public school system did not like to talk about state history a lot) and this is really cool. I just think how settlements/townships evolve and develop around their specific geography and resources is neat. Nothing more historically accurate than the dirt
The following is my great-grandfather's obituary. He mined iron ore in the Hanging Rock region. I wonder if his death was related to the phenomena discussed in the video. Obituary From Ironton Register SHINANT, William Dec 22, 1882 Died oct 15, 1882 in Little Texas when slate fell on him. Leaves wife and three children. Fatal Accident -- Wm. Shinant was an ore-digger at the Iron & Steel mines, in Little Texas. Last Wednesday night, he went into the drift after supper, with his partner, a brother-in-law. They sat down a moment before beginning work, but were hardly seated, when a big chunk of slate weighing two or three tons settled down on Shinant's head and shoulders, as he sat in a stooping posture. He never spoke afterward, but died in a few minutes. The other man was not hurt at all. He saw the slate coming and sprang out of the way, but hadn't time to warn Shinant, who was directly under it. The dead man's light in his cap was not put out by the accident, nor was he disfigured. With the heavy mass resting on him, he sat in nearly the same position as before the slate fell. He was extricated after a half hour's work. Mr Shinant was a sober, industrious man and an excellent workman. He leaves a wife and three children
They actually have in some places, though it's quite faded and hard to get much from. You can see solifluction lobes related to ice age climate in Pennsylvania as one example. Other parts of Google Maps have "tried" to do it but ended up making an essentially useless background topography. It's definitely a work in progress for them. Did you see the video on here about publicly available lidar? It works pretty well for much of the country.
Let me tell you about building fence in these mountains.... Jaaaaaysus! Most of the times I can chip out the sandstone from post holes, but sometimes its just a solid giant boulder of rock wth 4-6 inches of soil on top. Depending on where it is, it can be drilled with a bobcat and diamond hydraulic powered drill. I have built miles and miles of fence on the cumberland plateau and surrounding areas and it is certainly a challenge at times. Sometimes you just have to change the fence layout when the property \ land permits.
I wonder if the mud slides that were so prevalent during Hurricane Helene in W NC and E TN recently were caused by this? I noted one comment talked about problems around Black Mountain which was a hard hit area during Hurricane Helene.
The Helene stuff was mostly the product of days of extreme rainfall even before the actual hurricane. Lots of old road embankments failed and caused debris flows, but plenty were natural. A rain event like that will always produce lots of slope failure. There isn't/wasn't extensive mining in that part of North Carolina like there is up in Spruce Pine.
Generally speaking, yes. The modern landscape can be visualized as a nearly flat surface cutting through folds miles tall (or deep, I guess). The modern landscape is not, of course, flat, but the 1000 or 2000 feet of mountain relief is small compared to the nearly 20,000 foot depth of the fold structures. In this case, the layers are folded into a convex-up anticline, so deep layers are squeezed up into the middle. Some of the deep layers are more difficult to erode, and they support the mountain slopes.
I live in the alps so I don't really care about the appalachian's mines but where I grew up (a valley near Iseo Lake )there were many ancients mines of every kind (some romans period) and what I see here it's very interesting for helping me recognize those so ancients mines.
Man has made Swiss cheese out of the Earth. The native Americans say the mountains eventually will heal themselves. As a native Central Virginian I thank you for posting this fascinating geology.
We live by God, and therfore natures grace. It scars itself just as much and recycles. No matter what we do Earth will be shaped by natural forces many of whicb we have little to no knowledge about the causes.
I make it with ArcGIS and Google Earth, so it requires a few computer steps. I don't know of anywhere that you can just immediately download it, but it may exist. I know some of the gold mine guys like lidar, and I think I have seen a video of them using some program to do it in a step or two. I just get the lidar data from USGS or a state survey, process it up, then export the overlay. For the work I do, it's the most important tool to have, by far.
And treasure hunters. America has been shot from air with new tech and you will soon see many states turn to shit from being exploited for what they have found and are after.
I recently moved to this area. I love Clifton Forge and Covington. Wish i knew more spots to coin hunt here though, seems like there would be treasures here
I'm a geologist that grew up just a few miles of that area, near some of the other furnaces in Botetourt (thank you for pronouncing the county correctly, that was a breath of fresh air lol). most of the furnaces and mines were related to the Civil War, producing iron for military purposes, but the quality of the ore and iron produced wasn't high enough, nor was the yield, to make them viable as the industry really went into full swing, to keep them open. Plus, That post-bellum period up to the turn of the cemtury saw the timber industry in that part of the world take off and become more economically viable, and all taken together kind of ended the iron production in Rockbridge and Botetourt. Very interesting video.
All very true. Strip logging took out all of West Virginia and some of Virginia.
I live in Botetourt and spend my winters exploring the mines/iron furnaces in the area. 👍
I went to those furnaces a few years back with a friend from the area (Daleville) . There was a hiking trail and waterfall nearby , can't remember the exact place names. One of my favorite things to do is go up to paddle the james river , such a beautiful state we live in.
You every walk out to the workings southwest of Stone Coal Creek up above Haymakertown? That's one of the coolest places around.
@@TheGeoModels I realize this question wasn’t meant for me but are any of the tunnels open at that old mine? I’ve driven past it hundreds of times trail riding but have never stopped. Thanks
Great presentation. There's an area in a town a few miles from me like this. They removed the toe of the mountain from mining. There's a huge slump area and crack on the mountain. I told my friend, the Sheriff, if that slides on down, Virginia City could have a chain reaction from all the abandoned silver mines under the town collapsing. At minimum, it would make a noise that would even scare off the ghosts - lol.
I have wondered how prevalent big but subtle movements like this are. I guess you can actually see them in a drier place without trees everywhere! Most Appalachian slopes that experience large but deep, gradual movement appear to be susceptible to just that--large and slow movement. Plenty of huge slope failures have a stream eroding their toe, and they just creep along. I'm not sure if there is enough potential energy in the landscape to make more rapid large, deep failures, but nobody would want to find out, either. I was recently told about a bridge piling with anchors going 80 ft deep that was moving peacefully along on top of a huge landslide. The slide was apparently 115 ft deep.
@TheGeoModels not sure if this will work on here. If it does, it's on Google maps, horseshoe shaped above the open pit mine. Very deep and obvious from the ground. 39°18'10"N 119°39'25"W
I wonder if the rain saturation like what Helene put on WV and NC would make a full-fledged HUGE land and debris slide that would make Helene’s look like a tiny little landslide…
A lot of them are already collapsed
I've had relatives who worked in mines in Virginia and West Virginia tell me that they hollowed out entire mountains in some places. They said the only thing holding the mountain up was the wood timbers.
The old timers did a lot of work!
And they're still allowed to vote. Imagine that.
@@iGoVroomVroomso are you that’s why it’s America
Very interesting! I did a seismic/geophysics job out in Iron Gate a few years back. Now I know why it got its name.
What yall looking for out there (if you can divulge)?
@@TheGeoModels Ah, well, there was an old gas pipeline that was put in back in the 40s(?). It was gonna get replaced so we were doing a depth to bedrock study to see where competent bedrock started. Basically they needed to know where they could blast or just use a dozer. Some areas we did them in, I don't know how you would get a dozer back there. Also, carrying a car battery up or down those slopes was not fun.
Also, those adits sound dangerous. I don't know if the Virginia Survey has closed them off, but a buddy of mine and I explored some old small mines around Dadeville, Alabama which were not marked or closed off, but abandoned. If you fell down into one of those, you're not coming back out. I have a video of one where we dropped a GoPro down in one. If you look closely towards the end, you can see deer bones at the bottom. Don't wander the woods at night.
Lived in Alleghany county all my life and am today years old learning how precarious some of the surrounding topography is....wow
As forested as these mtns are, its amazing that the LIDAR ground returns are good enough to show this much detail.
There are also limestone mines in this area. There were "bubbles" of limestone which formed under the slate and sand stone. These were mined out for use in the iron production. I was last in one near Lowmore in the sixties. If I remember correctly it was probably 70 feet tall and several hundred feet in diameter. Most of the old furnaces have been destroyed. They were down by the river across I-64 from where the hospital now stands. The mines at Iron Gate supplied the iron plate armor for the Merrimac. It was forged there in the gorge and shipped to the shipyard in Portsmouth on bateaus down the James River. That was the story I was told by some of the old timers. I lived and worked here during the construction of I-64.
Being born and raised in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky near Black Mountain and having worked in the coal mines of Appalachia including Kentucky and Alabama, I did not know about the geology of those mountains south and east of the coal field.
Thanks for educating me and presenting such a nice video.
I feel those mountians are a giant dragon!..
How many people have their mountain house high on a slope, not knowing they are sitting on a geologic sled ride.
A surprising number, to say the least.
The mine may be gone, but generations of people still live there.
My cabin is on the side of a hill that had the mountaintop removed for strip-mining about 40 years ago. I haven't seen any evidence of the back-filled soil moving, but it may just be too slow to notice.
A big rain could bring it down.
There's a reason we build in valleys and even then only certain valleys. Bedrock over Java. Java has those views but...
I did a lot of different things in a 41 1/2 year career in geology, including going back to school in geography to qualify as a gis analyst. Ultimately I got to do field mapping, then about half way through lidar became available. I started doing my own processing and immediately realized that the work I had finished the years before had suddenly become obsolete!
Sucks, but a lot of folks jobs became obsolete due to technology. But it was important work when we didn't have the tech, so we thank you all the same.
Thank you for your service grandfather
It upon shoulders such as yours we all need help to stand on. We all move through the same. Even with the new, the knowledge from before is so valuable. So many skills are lost when new things come forward. AI is coming next. It will never replace a human being. Thank you.
p.s. Lord help us all if we had no electricity and computer data is lost. Not many have a backup paper trail nor do they know how to do it without the computers. There should always be a water proof, fireproof storage to maintain current records. Hospitals, grid, gas, water, electric, grocery tag, ect.
Very interesting. South West Virginia and north east TN have a history of iron mining as well. It would be cool to see a LiDAR perspective of those mountains too.
There's a little bit of it in the ancient impact westward growth of America vid on here. It's about Cumberland Gap. Awesome area, and Pine and Cumberland Mountain are incredible with lidar.
It's amazing to me what the lidar reveals about the geography under the vegetation of the tree canopy. I had no idea that iron mining took place in Virginia in addition to coal mining. It makes sense because iron ore was being extracted from the ground way back along this mountain system up through Pennsylvania along with coal as well which fed the early steel industry of Pittsburgh.
Lidar sort of changes how you can look at history. Everything from old mining to landslides from historic storms are easy to see!
I grew up in central West Virginia where a great deal of strip mining took place in the 1930s and 40s. I used to roam those hills above the strip mines and found many such slip faults, where the top of the mountain had become unstable. This was in the 1960s so it must be much worse by now. There are few people living directly near the strip mines but those who are, in Brooklyn and other such places, may be in great danger. Since the underground mines have closed, in the late 20th century, water has stopped being pumped from the mines so many springs have returned, weakening the rock structure even more. Nothing can be done about the slippage but what can be done to warn the people way back in the Hollars?
Once the slope shifts it's mostly stable again. It would take hundreds, maybe thousands of years for springwater to erode enough material for a major slip. Nature works at her own pace that mortal hands don't really understand. I'd say the hollers are safe. Worry more about the suits that owned these mines living in concrete, foodless cities.
Very cool! My great grandparents lived in Covington & I spent a lot of my Summer's up there while growing up in the 80's & early 90's. Would swim in the creek at Humpback Bridge which was actually owned by my family way back when. My grandfather's parents are buried in Low Moor. I love those mountains! Very interesting to see them in a different perspective!
They are something else. When you look at them with this sort of digital topography there are lots of "humpback" looking features. Big Hill on 220 is particularly interesting. Low Moor is really cool from the standpoint of landscape evolution--the river has some old terraces and meander cut-offs way up in town. You could find "river jack" cobbles way up on the hills today and wonder how on earth they got up there.
My dad is from the western side of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His father was a coal miner. The mines are pretty much closed, and the collapsed mines have become small lakes.
Most of my family escaped mines in SW VA and KY to enjoy better employment at for and GM in the 60s and 70s.
@@nathanielswindall7243 - My dad went to college on a football scholarship, but went into the Army.
I am from Alleghany county and they talked about the side of the mountain in iron gate sliding down into the river creating a dam. If that happened, Clifton forge and Covington would flood almost immediately.
I came too late for Lidar and really enjoy your videos. I was limited to ground studies and 3D studies of aerial photos with mirror stereoscopes. One factor to consider in slope failure of folded strata is bedding plane movements during folding that shear off irregularities in weaker interbeds, creating planes with very low friction coefficients and low if any cohesion (some recementation after folding may occur. Birmingham Alabama has major problems with block slides that require very little to mobilize when toe removal occurs. At one site, a slab about six feet thick started sliding downslope during construction by removal of a small amount at the toe. I walked on the moving slide as it downhill, pushing into the flat floor of the larger cut. It was a claystone layer within a larger stack of interbedded sandstones and shales. We also reactivated a paleolandslide in a wind gap where a creek had cut through the ridge (Red Mtn). Removed about ten feet of material from the toe of this old unrecognized slide to use the weight the toe of the downdip sliding block elsewhere on the site. This allowed the eroded old slide to begin sliding again on its old failure arc that was perpendicular to the strike. Consider that there may be planes at residual strength due to folding or older terrrain modifications.
Great explanations. Your models explain a lot. Thank you for this!
Interesting presentation, could there be a correlation between any situations like this and the disaster that just happened further south in the Appalachians? Seems like heavy rains could be a catalyst for collapses like these.
They would help it along, and these huge slides might have moved a bit more during particularly wet periods. Helene-type events cause lots of debris flows, which are fluidized slides that are extremely dangerous. I'll do some videos about it. I work in that region producing landslide hazard maps. The mountains are absolutely covered with scars from slides that happened during past floods. Folks alive today haven't seen one like Helene, but it's certainly not the region's first, and won't be its last.
@@TheGeoModels plz do so we can know what you find!
Giles county would be an awesome place to look at we border war Virginia and have the New River and Helene literally caused the 100 year flood, were a crater no matter which way ya go out of town ya gotta go over a mntn we din have older mines and I think in Newport area towards Newcastle I saw a furnace it was HUGE amazing to see it and think about that time period and how they made stuff love this stuff@@TheGeoModels
Also during Helene I feel like we were sooo lucky to not have more damage like n.c. but the rain did poor but we were super dry too and haven't had but a drizzle ever since so we're dry again and when it pours as ground is dry water has no where to go the new river flooded but our creeks didn't, been kinda sad really creeks been low all summer I couldn't even kayak the creek cause I only go when u don't have to get out of ur kayaks a hundred times and walk the rapids I like to go when water is up and can barely see the rocks but anyway glad I came across ur video it be cool to check out Giles, the town of narrows and folks along the river got he worst of it due to flooding think 46 families lost their homes all along the river so sad always been told by local folklore the natives called the new river the river of death kinda freaky thoughts came to my mind when Helene hit
I love your presentation. I have absolutely no clue about anything concerning geology but I found your video fascinating and learned a lot from it. Thank you for the opportunity to learn something new today. 😁
Great presentation. Thx. ✌🏻 enjoyed hearing a speaker that doesn't add in uhh, you know, etc. Well done Sir.
I do my best! Glad you enjoyed it!
What website can I find liDAR images at?
Please and thank you very much.
Fascinating. I would love to see more of this, particularly headed down towards SW VA. There is fascinating mining history in Wythe County and the surrounding area, particularly in the area known as the Lead Mines. There was also extensive mining for iron dating back to the colonial era. Thank you. Great video.
quick question! how does one get ahold of this LIDAR data? im always exploring the area near suh arkansas ( a old zinc mining town) and am interested in trying to see through the tree tops to find areas to document, Is this public data or how would one go about\ acquiring and viewing this data
I grew up in appalachia and we lived back behind an 1800s era coal mine, I explored it and the whole place was held up by timber and many sections were less then 3ft tall. Many sections caved in, but the main passages were pretty much intact.
Thank you for your presentation! There have been recent terrestrial landslides that have impacted thousands of people, but your presentation is showing creepy similarities to some of the larger historic landslips. Can this be called geochemical faulting? Thank you for your work!
what's the main reason those mines were closed?
Economics. The ore isn't exceptionally high grade, and it occurs in discontinuous seams that are tilted, so how much is easily available from the ground surface is variable and not exceptionally high. It can't compete with iron resources likes those around the Great Lakes, which are geologically very different.
That was a really easy and informative model/example at the beginning of this video.
There are a couple iron works in the Woodbridge and Occoquan areas. Most neglected and lost. There is some information on the Neabsco Iron Works. I heard that in one of the clover leaves of I-95 is a furnace. I believe it's the Woodbridge exit but might be the Dale city. I'm guessing that ore might have come here for processing. Perhaps down the Shenandoah river to the Potomac river? There is a lot of red clay from the Shenandoah valley to the Chesapeake bay.
Good pronunciation of Botetourt . That mine at Low Moor actually has a cave in the back that beelines toward another cave in the area. They almost connect but in the upper dev of the passages. A little spicy closer to the surface in that area
Just about every slope in that area is ready to move a little bit with just the slightest disturbance.
Ive actually been inside the mine you’re referring to (with permission from the owners of course). It’s like being on another planet in there.
I’m from Grundy Va they have deep mined striped mine this place to death there are still a few mines left buch 1 is a huge shaft mine they put out about 10 million tons of coal a year or did I haven’t checked in a while.
I live in clifton forge, is that LiDAR map available online ? I'll totally go check them out
It is on The National Map Viewer hosted by the USGS. Just Google for it. When the viewer opens, you have to select the Hillshade layer from the drop down menu. The Layer drop down is like a little stack of plates or cards or whatever. Select hillshade, and you can see a lot. They don't have slope shade, so the northwest ridges are bright, but it's still awesome.
Do you teach a course anywhere? Absolutely the best explanations I have ever seen.
Thank you. Used to teach plenty at Virginia Tech back in the day. I work as a consultant now. I guess UA-cam is my attempt to return to teaching!
OMG, the LIDAR is incredible. You guys don't even need to walk the transects anymore. 😂
I guess it's nice to ground-truth features, but the lidar is def a game changer. Lots of structural geology work in Appalachia is legitimately better done with lidar, at least from a qualitative standpoint in heavily forested areas
@@TheGeoModels From a practical standpoint as well, I expect in some hollows and low points you might have trouble getting enough satellite fixes to achieve much with GPS. I presume your LiDAR work doesn't require soaking in DEET and other bug juices and you can wear flipflops. But as a bonus being in the outdoors would you get much of a suntan now maneuvering under and through those trees and bush, so maybe low SPF suffices?
Are these landslides/ mine collapses the cause of the frequent minor earthquakes in western Virginia and other states?
No, those are from deeper down in the Earth where more stress can accumulate and then slip loose. Most are a few miles deep, though some are only a couple of miles. The slides in this video still aren't too big in the greater scheme of things, and they probably didn't move all at once...I'd actually be interested to know! Check out Rattlesnake Mountain in Washington State; it's a recent landslide sort of like the ones in the vid. It moved over a period of time--it was fast geologically, but was still a slow process. Eastern North America has some tectonic stress on it. It's not huge, but there's enough there to make the Earth's crust slip and budge now and then. The fact that the Appalachians have so many old geologic structures in them allows the crust places to slip.
Great video, thanks. Just a quick question. Any guess as to the "speed" of the settling? Slow shifting over time or staggered sudden shifts? I know the sand model is quick, but geology usually isn't. 🙂
this is an amazing video!
Two Questions - Is there a resource we can see LIDAR maps of the US? And How do road cuts effect this type of rock movement? Are some roads less safe because they were cut through unstable rock before we knew better?? I-40 in Western NC???
Roadway cuts can be (and are) reinforced with driven steel piles after the fact if needed. They'll blow a large grid of bore holes hundreds of feet deep and drive giant steel piles into the face of the cut. Oftentimes the heads of the piles are used to install steel netting to catch loose rock before it falls to the highway--you see this more in the Rockies, but there's places in Appalachia where you can see it too (usually in Appalachia the piles are buried under strapped topsoil). This reinforces the slope against slippage and protects who or whatever is downslope from boulders and rocks falling from erosion.
Short answer is if we find unstable faces we cut through eons ago, we don't just wait for it to fail. There's remedies. Look up "Slope Engineering for Mountain Roads" if this kind of thing interests you.
What is the time-scale of these slope 'lurches' or movements? Did this happen all in one sudden shift as your physical model shows, or did this happen very slowly over time? Would this have happened as they were working?
probably slow. I haven’t seen it documented, but the movements aren’t huge, either. my guess is that they were starting during work, and were slow, and have continued slowly. a wet period might give you a big lurch
Great video……what type of mining occurred? Surface?
Again, great video, I love learning about the area.
Excellent overview of Lidar in our mountains. I live in Marshall, North Carolina. I wonder how many of the slides were created by mines here?
No mining of this scale out there...the Helene stuff is a product of extreme rainfall, existing geology, and (lots of times) road embankments. I've already seen a large number of failures that got started where a road embankment was developed on a slope. In that sense, human constructions contributed to them, but it was the extreme rain that actually made them happen. Trying to do a Helene video or two here shortly.
@@TheGeoModels thank you for responding so quickly. Your synopsis is what I was thinking, I’m familiar with the large minds around me Spruce Pine for example. Today is my first day out to help a friend whose road just got rebuilt and access is available some power poles down no power he has Starlink and propane generator. i’m going to attach a map of where I’m going. Let me know if I could help with the field research. Brian
I am going to Newberry Creek Road out of old Fort North Carolina. I had a map drawn no option to attach or paste. Blue Ridge Parkway is above him. 3000 feet elevation difference.
There is one in Botetourt that is a park with the workings of making steel for cannons circa civil war. There are historical placards explaining everything.
New Jersey has over 100 mines and forge sites dating from colonial times. During the American Revolution 79 forges operated at the same, producing cannons for Washington. The Franklin stoves were mostly forged in New Jersey. The sites are in the Highlands area, in similar geology, but not as high or steep. However, this is at the toe of the glaciated region and the land is still responding to the removal of the glacial ice 17,000 years ago. Is there any similar activity outside of Appalachia, especially in New Jersey?
Are the lidar maps something open to the public you can add to google earth or something you have done yourself?
Great video! So interesting. I’d say after Helene these people in Va should take notice
a ridge in Washington state next to the city of Yakima started to have a very slow landslide over the course of a decade that looks a lot like this and was definitely caused by the extensive gravel mining done to the base of the ridge.
Nice video! I grew up on the Appalachians in VA, I have memory's of walking on the sandstone and shale mix. I never realized there was a chemical reaction, amazing.
You don't see it much in today's forested world, but way back when they were all about getting iron out of it.
I live along I64 between two of the sites in your video (specifically where i81 and i64 merge). Most of the houses here have foundation issues including mine. Also Radon.
I’m in botetourt county all the time, I knew there were old mining roads and remnants all over the area but I had no idea it was right there in the heart.
Very interesting, especially to someone who knows nothing about this. Your explanations are excellent.
I'm curious if you have done any study of the area around Johnstown, Pa, and the big floods there. My hometown.
I’ve spent years hiking the mountains around Callie. All the adits are collapsed or dynamited shut. There is so much history in that area.
Bisbee AZ has same thing going on with the copper queen mine. The mountain is opening up as it slids into pit and down town Bisbee.
This is the same principal that caused the mudslides in NC during Helene. Land disturbance for whatever reason like building a home & barn plus inordinate amounts of water led to disaster.
@7:33, could those be exploratory workings along the strike of the bedding where someone was looking to expand the mine?
Just imagine what all these flood waters from Helene are going to do to the area
They've changed western North Carolina, but it's happened before. The mountains are covered with scars from it.
how stable are those areas, then? are they landslides waiting to happen?
I always wondered why it is called iron gate I’ve seen it the exit on 81
Thanks this was very informative and relaxing to watch. I'm from the Unicoi/Erwin TN area. Use to live 3 miles from the NC border off TN395, I moved last year on up into the mountains. Alot of sand stone here mixed with some coal, bought a nice part of the mountain here, I'd never live anywhere else.
i'm unaware of any coal within those mountains. I thought they are far too old to have coal. They rose before life even existed on land somewhere around 500mya.
Did the water from Hurricane Helene contribute to possible mine collapses and the large number of landslides?
Where can. I get that lidar map
I wish lidar was available to view online for free. There are some type of mines down the road from me and have always wanted to see the lidar around here. They don't even have a paved road down in that section. No one dares build a house either.
Do you think the loud booms we are hearing has something to do with this? Everybody heard loud booms all over the tricities and south west virginia last night.
Are these open pit mines or collapsed mine shafts?
They're called mining breaks here in eastern KY and western VA I worked in deep mine not stripped mine and 8t would fall in so high while pilling that they had to take sheets of metal and lay over them outside on top of the cracks to keep it from flooding us out when it rained hard I ve seemed it fall to tree roots came in we had lots of coverage our mine was under high mountains I loved working on a pillar section the last one was nine years I'm retired now but I miss it
Noble work!
Interesting - and a nice viewing tool as well. I see similar structures in the hill sides of South Wales that I always assumed the results of ancient faults, post glaciation adjustments and mining. After watching this I suspect mining and quarrying was the predominant reason.
This was such a great visualization. Is this the same kind of land slide that's happening with the Rancho Palos Verdes slide(s)?
On the last mine, the drifts drive towards that depression, under the depression, at the bottom of the slope you can see what might be another adit or haulage tunnel, I propose that a stope was formed under the depression and material was passed down or hauled through the higher admits, either way that stope if it's there, could it have collapsed and caused that depression on the top of the mountain?
Could you do a video covering old mines of North Carolina on this topic?
Where can I get these LiDar images? Google earth?
So I have a question as to whether similar or like phenomenon exists where natural water runoff sculpted the toe?
This is amazing! Thanks!
Can you do one on Spec and Nace mines in botetourt co, over near the blue ridge parkway?
Saw slipping in Washington state near Yakima where they were mining at the base.
Where can I access these LIDAR images?
This stuff is great, been through the area a few times, would never have known about iron mines, really what people did for a living in the area. Perhaps the high wall is recognizable? Do a fair amount of hiking, and you do see artifacts, some sort of pits, if nothing else old roads going into the hills, mining? lumber? and this will give me another thing to think about when I see stuff. Now that I think about it there are some exhibits up in the Catoctin Mountains (MD) for furnaces and pig iron.
Ok, so I am looking to buy land in WVa to start a homestead. Am I going to create a problem like this by excavating a small root celler into the rocky hillside? What should I look for to ensure my future property isn't going to slide into the next landowners boundaries? Is there public record of these mining operations thar I can use to research property for sale. Some of these parcels are large enough that I may never see every square foot of what I own and may not see there was a former mining operation.
hay where can you find LiDAR maps for my area?
What can we do about this. I am aftaid to walk outside the house because the ground may cave in.
With hurricane Helene recently eroding material from so many creek beds (similar to mining the toes of hillsides), how long before we should expect slumps and slides of the hills above?
next rain, probably…
I'm not into geology but anything historical in VA is interesting to me, (as the public school system did not like to talk about state history a lot) and this is really cool. I just think how settlements/townships evolve and develop around their specific geography and resources is neat. Nothing more historically accurate than the dirt
Bingo and potentially discover past crimes and natural disasters....not to be confused with fake natural disasters.
What software is that and are the overlays from USGS remote sensing satellites?
The software is Google Earth. He said he made the overlays in ArcGIS from USGS LIDAR data.
The following is my great-grandfather's obituary. He mined iron ore in the Hanging Rock region. I wonder if his death was related to the phenomena discussed in the video.
Obituary
From Ironton Register
SHINANT, William Dec 22, 1882
Died oct 15, 1882 in Little Texas when slate fell on him. Leaves wife and three children.
Fatal Accident -- Wm. Shinant was an ore-digger at the Iron & Steel mines, in Little Texas. Last Wednesday night, he went into the drift after supper, with his partner, a brother-in-law. They sat down a moment before beginning work, but were hardly seated, when a big chunk of slate weighing two or three tons settled down on Shinant's head and shoulders, as he sat in a stooping posture. He never spoke afterward, but died in a few minutes. The other man was not hurt at all. He saw the slate coming and sprang out of the way, but hadn't time to warn Shinant, who was directly under it. The dead man's light in his cap was not put out by the accident, nor was he disfigured. With the heavy mass resting on him, he sat in nearly the same position as before the slate fell. He was extricated after a half hour's work. Mr Shinant was a sober, industrious man and an excellent workman. He leaves a wife and three children
I wish Google Maps would upgrade their terrain overlay with these lidar images.
They actually have in some places, though it's quite faded and hard to get much from. You can see solifluction lobes related to ice age climate in Pennsylvania as one example. Other parts of Google Maps have "tried" to do it but ended up making an essentially useless background topography. It's definitely a work in progress for them. Did you see the video on here about publicly available lidar? It works pretty well for much of the country.
@@TheGeoModels can you send us a link? Curious to check the mine outside Galax VA where my dad worked…
This is really cool use of data.
The old iron furnaces are still there along the side of the road by the river.
Let me tell you about building fence in these mountains.... Jaaaaaysus! Most of the times I can chip out the sandstone from post holes, but sometimes its just a solid giant boulder of rock wth 4-6 inches of soil on top. Depending on where it is, it can be drilled with a bobcat and diamond hydraulic powered drill. I have built miles and miles of fence on the cumberland plateau and surrounding areas and it is certainly a challenge at times. Sometimes you just have to change the fence layout when the property \ land permits.
I wonder if the mud slides that were so prevalent during Hurricane Helene in W NC and E TN recently were caused by this? I noted one comment talked about problems around Black Mountain which was a hard hit area during Hurricane Helene.
The Helene stuff was mostly the product of days of extreme rainfall even before the actual hurricane. Lots of old road embankments failed and caused debris flows, but plenty were natural. A rain event like that will always produce lots of slope failure. There isn't/wasn't extensive mining in that part of North Carolina like there is up in Spruce Pine.
Where can I find LIDAR imagry?
How much gold do you think was uncovered by hurricane helene with all the water powered erosion in some instances going down to bedrock?
You should do some geology work with copperhill in polk country TN
If there are any local old churches with graveyards, they can help sometimes - here in the UK there are many industrial/transport tragedies portrayed!
why does the rock get younger downhill? the mountain was originally a giant fold and the top of the fold has eroded quicker?
Generally speaking, yes. The modern landscape can be visualized as a nearly flat surface cutting through folds miles tall (or deep, I guess). The modern landscape is not, of course, flat, but the 1000 or 2000 feet of mountain relief is small compared to the nearly 20,000 foot depth of the fold structures. In this case, the layers are folded into a convex-up anticline, so deep layers are squeezed up into the middle. Some of the deep layers are more difficult to erode, and they support the mountain slopes.
You may be able to help me find a old sliver mine near a lake that drained once a year in NC. would want to do so? If so let know.
Imagine how many people would pay good money for his consultation, and he wouldn't even need to leave home.
I live in the alps so I don't really care about the appalachian's mines but where I grew up (a valley near Iseo Lake )there were many ancients mines of every kind (some romans period) and what I see here it's very interesting for helping me recognize those so ancients mines.
mining has the same landscape pattern for thousands of years…sort of a human thing I guess
Man has made Swiss cheese out of the Earth. The native Americans say the mountains eventually will heal themselves. As a native Central Virginian I thank you for posting this fascinating geology.
We live by God, and therfore natures grace. It scars itself just as much and recycles. No matter what we do Earth will be shaped by natural forces many of whicb we have little to no knowledge about the causes.
How did you get Lidar on google earth overlay? That’s so cool!
I make it with ArcGIS and Google Earth, so it requires a few computer steps. I don't know of anywhere that you can just immediately download it, but it may exist. I know some of the gold mine guys like lidar, and I think I have seen a video of them using some program to do it in a step or two. I just get the lidar data from USGS or a state survey, process it up, then export the overlay. For the work I do, it's the most important tool to have, by far.
How do you get that LiDAR overlay on Google Earth?
Lol...wouldn't you like to know...
@@DayTon-h9u yes I would like to know. Why did you say that strangely
I wonder if the 29" of rain is going to have made any of these things happen much faster?
Wow - fascinating. I can imagine low cost LIDAR data is a critical new tool for land management.
And treasure hunters. America has been shot from air with new tech and you will soon see many states turn to shit from being exploited for what they have found and are after.
I recently moved to this area. I love Clifton Forge and Covington. Wish i knew more spots to coin hunt here though, seems like there would be treasures here