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The Appalachia is a Musica Per Matrimonio In Veneto mountain range named after an Indian village by Spanish explorers. For most people, Appalachia brings to mind beautiful mountainscapes; a peaceful wonderland, lively forests, old-time mountain music, and a simpler way Marketing Event And Public Relations life. The largest mountain range in North America, Best Films Of 2002 Appalachia spans approximately 1600 miles, north to south, from Quebec to Georgia.

Today, the most popular attraction for hiking and nature enthusiasts is the Appalachian Trail, a hiking trail that winds through wooded peaks from Springer Mountain in Northern Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine. This hike journeys through fourteen states, and could take an adventurer five to six months to traverse, start to finish.

The Appalachians are rich in coal; other resources include iron, petroleum, and Crested Butte Ski Resorts gas. But that's not all; the old Appalachian mountain chain has shaped the natural history and biodiversity of this continent. Its forests and treetops, moisture, and latitudinal gradients Diet Loss Menu Weight helped protect its species during periods of climate change. The diversity in elevations helps to extend the distribution of certain species throughout the region. Species that thrive in the colder northern climate often inhabit the higher elevations of the south as well. The Appalachians are among the richest temperate areas, and includes approximately 255 birds, 78 mammals, 58 reptiles, and 76 amphibians.

Pinpointing the various (and exact) plant species is difficult due to the density and richness within the Appalachians. The count, however, is high. Kartesz and Meacham (1999) list 6,374 plant species in 10 focal states within the mapped Phonix Drug Rehab (AL, GA, TN, KY, WV, PA, NY, VT, NH, ME); 1,722 of which are exotic and 76 native endemics, including 6 listed as extinct.

The Southern Appalachians are The Shopping Center Group a renowned hot spot for a number of aquatic species, in part because the mountain range drains to the south and allows species to escape extermination due to their ice-cold origins. The Appalachian's fish, mussel, and crayfish richness is extraordinary. Tennessee alone has over 290 fish species.

According to the Nature Conservancy, the mountain region including southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, Pantalon Hombre Karl Kani Kentucky and northeastern Tennessee contains some of the highest levels of biological diversity in the nation.

The people of Appalachia have helped build its geotourism map by nominating the adventure sites and experiences they thought best represented the beauty and diversity of their homelands.

The Devastation of Mountaintop Removal

It's hard to believe that one of the most beautiful, immense national treasures of this continent is in danger of absolute distinction. When we think of deforestation, the rainforests of Costa Rica, Belize, Brazil are the first to come to mind and we tend to forget about our own homeland. Figures from the multi-agency environmental impact statement that was completed in 2003 estimated that more than 700,000 acres in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee had been stripped beyond restoration.

The destruction doesn't stop on the mountaintop; the waste, also known as overburden or spoil, is pushed down into the valleys below. As a result, 6,700 "valley fills" were approved in central Appalachia between 1985 and 2001. The United States EPA estimates that over 700 miles of healthy streams have been completely buried by mountaintop removal and thousands more have been damaged. Where there once flowed a uniquely integrated system of headwater streams, now a vast circuitry of haul roads winds through the rubble. From the air, the devastation looks as if someone had tried to plot a highway system on the moon.

Mountaintop removal mining is a form of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to blast as much as 800 to 1000 feet off the tops of mountains order to reach the highly profitable coal seams that lie beneath. The millions of tons of overburden, waste rock, dirt, and vegetation are subsequently dumped into the valleys below, burying hundreds of miles of streams, along with their aquatic life, under the piles of rubble. Mountaintop removal mining harms not only aquatic ecosystems and water quality, but also destroys hundreds of acres of healthy forests and wildlife habitat, including habitat of threatened and endangered species, when the tops of mountains are blasted away.

This practice also devastates Appalachian communities and cultures that have existed in these mountains for centuries. Residents of the surrounding communities are threatened by rockslides, catastrophic floods, poisoned water supplies, constant blasting, destroyed property, and lost culture. Mountaintop removal mining takes place in many states in the Appalachian region, with its highest concentration in West Virginia, Kentucky, southern Virginia, and eastern Tennessee.

In West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and eastern Kentucky, coal companies blast as much as 600 feet off the top of the mountains, then dump the rock and debris into mountain streams. Over 300,000 acres of the most beautiful hardwood forests in America have already been turned into barren grasslands. Mountaintop removal mining increases flooding, contaminates drinking water supplies, cracks foundations of nearby homes, and showers towns with dust and noise from blasting.

"You could walk through the forest. You could hear the animals. The woods like to talk to you. You could feel a part of Mother Nature. In other words, everywhere you looked there was life. Now you put me on the same ground where I walked, and the only thing you can feel is the vibration of dynamite or heavy machinery. No life, just dust." - Larry Gibson (http://www.stopmountaintopremoval.org/larrys-story.com)

Clean Coal Still Requires Coal

According to the Bush administration's own estimates, mountaintop removal mining in this region has already destroyed over 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that at least 2,400 miles of streams will be permanently wiped out by 2013 if additional environmental restrictions are not enforced. Mountaintop removal mining has also leveled over 800 square miles of West Virginia land. If this permit approval continues, by the end of this decade 2,200 square miles of Appalachian land will be lost, an area equal in size to the entire state of Delaware.

Now let's Basketball Gift Player to election year 2008, where energy, environment, and economics take front stage and clean coal technology has a leading role. During their recent debates, neither the presidential nor the vice presidential candidates wanted to admit that there really is no such thing as clean coal. Despite years of research and billions of dollars, not a single commercial coal plant in the United States can capture and store its greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, scientists and even coal utility executives agree that this technology is at least a decade away, if not longer. For policymakers and others concerned about climate change, the real question is not whether coal can be made clean, but whether we should even try.

Clean coal holds a different meaning to many different people. Only until recently, the phrase was used to describe various processes to reduce air and water pollution caused by mining and burning coal, such as installing scrubbers on smokestacks to reduce the sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain. But biggest problem here is that coal is this country's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, period. Politicians and lawmakers use the term "clean coal" when they talk about carbon capture and sequestration; an attempt to capture an energy plant's carbon emissions and store them underground, permanently, rather than releasing them into the atmosphere, which contributes to global climate change.

But you can't tell the residents of Appalachia that coal is clean. Mountaintop removal coal mining has flattened 450 mountains, buried more than 700 miles of rivers and streams, and has sent hundreds of plant and aquatic species into extinction. One of the country's most beautiful regions, the Appalachians, is in danger of irreversible deforestation by the process of mountaintop removal.

In our attempts to bring global deforestation to an end, Paradise Earth would like to remind everyone that those same efforts need to made here, in our own great nation, as the environmental damages we are causing today will be left behind for future generations.

To learn more about the environmental impact of deforestation visit Paradise Earth online.