Mountaintop Mining Causes 40 Percent Loss of Aquatic Biodiversity

The DMC’s Emily Bernhardt is senior author on a study which found that the effects of mountaintop coal mining are even more widespread than previously reported. Streams from heavily mined watersheds harbor 40% fewer species than streams with cleaner water. “It was really surprising to see how consistent this decline in biodiversity is across all these really different groups of organisms, starting at really low levels of disturbance,” said Dr. Bernhardt. The study appears in the September 2021 issue of the journal Ecological Applications. Read more here.