Mapping the Decline of Coal

Amid growing concerns about "zombie mines"—abandoned or inactive sites that evade full reclamation—and the shifting landscape of U.S. energy policy under the current administration, it has become increasingly important to understand how coal production is evolving at the local level. To support data-driven insight into these trends, the following methodology was developed to analyze and visualize coal production data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration between 2014 and 2024.

The process involves:

• Data Structuring: Organizing raw MSHA production records by town, county, and state, and aggregating values at the town level for clarity and consistency.
• Trend Analysis: Calculating 10-year linear production trends to identify areas of sustained increase or decline.
• Quality Assurance: Merging records for towns that appear under multiple names due to reporting inconsistencies or typographical errors.
• Geolocation: Assigning geographic coordinates to towns using county-level mapping and the Google Maps API.
• Visualization: Displaying each town on a regional map with directional arrows:
  • Blue arrows signify increased coal production over the last decade.
  • Green arrows indicate a decline.
  • Black arrows denote towns where production dropped to zero by 2024.
    Arrow length is scaled to reflect the magnitude of change, offering an intuitive overview of where mining is accelerating, fading or vanishing altogether.

This approach aims to shed light on the evolving footprint of coal in Appalachia and provide a foundation for tracking policy impacts, enforcement gaps and reclamation risks in real time. We hope to produce similar real-time maps each quarter as more MSHA data become available and will continue to report on data trends and the impacts current coal policies are having on coal production in Appalachia.