Coal in the United

States
GSC 522: Digital Cartography. Fall 2013
Allie Potter

Analyzing the dispersion of surface and underground coal mines in the United States
along with other quantitative data depicted in thematic maps using ArcMap.
Coal in the United States

Introduction & Research Questions 1
Introduction & Research Questions
According to the World Coal Association there is only about 109 years left before
the world runs out of coal. The United States ranks second in the world, after China, in
the amount of coal produced. 43% of the electricity generated in the United States is
supplied through the burning of coal (World Coal Association 2013). All of these
statistics and facts lead one to wonder, where are the coal mines in the United States?
Where is the coal produced in the United States? Has the way we mine coal changed
as coal becomes more difficult to mine? And if we only have about 100 years left before
we run out of coal which states will this effect most?
Using the coal reports gotten from the U.S Energy Information Administration
website, a compilation of maps will answer the following questions in this report. Which
states have surface coal mines in the United States? Where is the most productive
surface coal mines in the United States? How has the distribution of surface coal mines
changed since 1994 in the United States? Which states have underground coal mines
in the United States? Where is the most productive underground coal mines in the
United States? How has the distribution of underground coal mines changed since 1994
in the United States? Which mining type, surface or underground, is used the most and
where in the United States? Is there a difference in mining between the eastern and
western parts of the United States? Is the average number of workers linked more with
production or number of mines? Using these questions I will construct proportional
symbol maps, gradient symbol maps, and combinations of both.

Coal in the United States

Methodology 2
Methodology
Coordinate Systems
For the contiguous United States, I used the USA Contiguous Albers Equal Area
Conic. For the inset of Alaska in the bottom left hand corner of the map, I used Alaska
Albers Equal Area Conic. For the inset of Hawaii, also in the bottom left hand corner of
the map, I used Hawaii Albers Equal Area Conic. Equal area conic projections
preserves the area of the property being displayed which is useful in this case since I
am displaying the distribution of mining sites and related data throughout the United
States. I used conic projections since they are widely used in mapping hemispheres or
mid-latitudes which matches what I am mapping. Conic projections also provide the true
distance and direction along the standard parallel.
Data Processing
Data was obtained from EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) and it
provides data for each year of the coal industry from 1994-2011. Although the website
has only the 2010 report, records are kept for every two years so 2010 and 2011 are in
the same report. Only the 2010 report was saved as excel, all other reports used had to
be copied from pdf files into excel files. There may be a possibility of human error due to
that although steps were taken to minimize this error. The U.S. Energy Information
Administration, Annual Coal Report for 1994, 2001, and 2010 where the data sources
for this project. The scale used in all of the maps where state scales.
Creation of usable data was the main portion of this project. To create usable tables to
import into a join in ArcMap data had to be organized in a certain way. Table 1 shows
the before editing report and Table 2 shows attribute table-ready excel files. Some parts
Coal in the United States

Methodology 3
of the data supplied by the EIA was deleted from the table. Areas not pertaining to
actual states had to go and I kept only the totals for those few states that had additional
categories such as Pennsylvania who had Anthracite and Bituminous coal separated
out. Anthracite and Bituminous coal are two types of coal, separated mainly by their
carbon content. Anthracite contains more carbon than bituminous coal.
In order to take information found in the EIA reports, the FIPS numbers for each
state were used as the identifier for the join. After creating the initial 51 (including the
District of Columbia) states and aligning them with their FIPS, the data was then
manually inputted alongside those states and numbers. New columns where created
and the data was separated into two excel pages, one for underground and one for
surface mines. The columns created were as follows: State_FIPS, State, Number of
mines 2011, Production 2011, Number of mines 2001, Production 2001, Number of
mines 1994, and Production 1994. The reason I chose those years was due to their
being approximately ten years apart which seemed an appropriate time period for
analyzing an industry. To create shapefiles needed for construction of thematic maps, I
joined the created excel sheets to a state shapefile and matched them up according to
their FIPS ID numbers. Errors here included not listing the FIPS as text and not listing
blanks as zeros.
Coal in the United States

Methodology 4










STATE
_FIPS
Surface Mining
by State
Number
of Mines
2011
Production
2011
Number
of Mines
2001
Production
2001
Number
of Mines
1994
Production
1994
01 Alabama 43 8,192 30 4,192 74 8,795
02 Alaska 1 2,149 1 1,514 1 1,567
04 Arizona 1 8,111 2 13,418 2 13,056
05 Arkansas 1 7 2 13 5 38
06 California 0 0 0 0 0 0
08 Colorado 3 5,382 5 9,825 5 8,972
09 Connecticut 0 0 0 0 0 0
10 Delaware 0 0 0 0 0 0
11 District of
Columbia
0 0 0 0 0 0
12 Florida 0 0 0 0 0 0
13 Georgia 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 Hawaii 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 Idaho 0 0 0 0 0 0
17 Illinois 9 5,053 7 5,671 11 9,516
18 Indiana 20 20,957 27 29,546 51 27,603
19 Iowa 0 0 0 0 1 46
20 Kansas 1 37 1 176 1 284
21 Kentucky 231 43,518 406 105,876 248 66,227
22 Louisiana 1 3,865 2 3,715 2 3,463
23 Maine 0 0 0 0 0 0
24 Maryland 19 2,064 12 1,399 17 793
25 Massachusett
s
0 0 0 0 0 0
26 Michigan 0 0 0 0 0 0
27 Minnesota 0 0 0 0 0 0
28 Mississippi 1 2,747 1 604 0 0
29 Missouri 2 465 2 366 6 838
30 Montana 5 36,873 6 39,143 7 41,636
31 Nebraska 0 0 0 0 0 0
32 Nevada 0 0 0 0 0 0
33 New
Hampshire
0 0 0 0 0 0
34 New Jersey 0 0 0 0 0 0
35 New Mexico 3 17,939 6 28,937 6 27,091
36 New York 0 0 0 0 0 0
37 North
Carolina
0 0 0 0 0 0
38 North Dakota 4 28,231 4 30,475 6 32,286
39 Ohio 36 9,194 50 12,506 124 16,290
40 Oklahoma 5 736 5 1,300 13 1,776
Table 1: Processed Data, Surface Mines
Coal in the United States

Methodology 5

41 Oregon 0 0 0 0 0 0
42 Pennsylvania 194 11,865 386 32,022 392 22,263
44 Rhode Island 0 0 0 0 0 0
45 South
Carolina
0 0 0 0 0 0
46 South Dakota 0 0 0 0 0 0
47 Tennessee 15 1,124 12 2,003 7 1,093
48 Texas 13 45,904 14 45,042 13 52,346
49 Utah 0 0 0 0 0 0
50 Vermont 0 0 0 0 0 0
51 Virginia 49 7,061 48 10,271 51 9,075
53 Washington 0 0 1 4,624 3 4,893
54 West Virginia 114 51,267 0 0 139 50,097
55 Wisconsin 0 0 0 0 0 0
56 Wyoming 17 435,630 17 368,749 26 234,357
Table 1: Processed Data, Surface Mines cont.
Coal in the United States

Methodology 6

STATE
_FIPS State
# mines
2011
Production
2011
#
Underground
mines 2001
Production
2001
#
Underground
mines 1994
Production
1994
01 Alabama 9 10,879 10 15,172 11 14,471
02 Alaska 0 0 0 0 0 0
04 Arizona 0 0 0 0 0 0
05 Arkansas 1 127 1 1 1 12
06 California 0 0 0 0 0 0
08 Colorado 7 21,508 8 23,547 13 16,332
09 Connecticut 0 0 0 0 0 0
10 Delaware 0 0 0 0 0 0
11
District of
Columbia 0 0 0 0 0 0
12 Florida 0 0 0 0 0 0
13 Georgia 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 Hawaii 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 Idaho 0 0 0 0 0 0
17 Illinois 15 32,717 13 28,112 23 43,281
18 Indiana 8 16,469 6 7,191 4 3,324
19 Iowa 0 0 0 0 0 0
20 Kansas 0 0 0 0 0 0
21 Kentucky 169 65,248 264 80,897 425 95,414
22 Louisiana 0 0 0 0 0 0
23 Maine 0 0 0 0 0 0
24 Maryland 3 873 3 3,245 3 2,839
25 Massachusetts 0 0 0 0 0 0
26 Michigan 0 0 0 0 0 0
27 Minnesota 0 0 0 0 0 0
28 Mississippi 0 0 0 0 0 0
29 Missouri 0 0 0 0 0 0
30 Montana 1 5,136 0 0 1 3
31 Nebraska 0 0 0 0 0 0
32 Nevada 0 0 0 0 0 0
33
New
Hampshire 0 0 0 0 0 0
34 New Jersey 0 0 0 0 0 0
35 New Mexico 1 3,983 1 680 1 950
36 New York 0 0 0 0 0 0
37 North Carolina 0 0 0 0 0 0
38 North Dakota 0 0 0 0 0 0
39 Ohio 10 18,972 10 12,894 10 13,607
40 Oklahoma 1 408 1 415 1 135
Table 1: Processed Data, Underground Mines
Coal in the United States

Methodology 7






41 Oregon 0 0 0 0 0 0
42 Pennsylvania 48 47,317 73 58,135 113 39,974
44 Rhode Island 0 0 0 0 0 0
45 South Carolina 0 0 0 0 0 0
46 South Dakota 0 0 0 0 0 0
47 Tennessee 6 423 11 1,321 17 1,893
48 Texas 0 0 0 0 0 0
49 Utah 8 19,648 13 26,966 14 24,399
50 Vermont 0 0 0 0 0 0
51 Virginia 61 15,461 109 22,503 180 28,054
53 Washington 0 0 0 0 0 0
54 West Virginia 159 83,395 196 99,550 323 111,679
55 Wisconsin 0 0 0 0 0 0
56 Wyoming 1 3,043 0 0 3 2,735
Table 1: Processed Data, Underground Mines, cont.
Coal in the United States

Results 8
When creating the chloropleth map, I used graduated colors. I used natural jenks
since it seemed to better represent my data and in some cases I adjusted the
categories to make the legend more easily understood. I gave the classification 5
classes in most cases. For the Average number of workers map, areas with red had
fewer employees, areas with green had a much greater number of employees. I also
eliminated the number of decimal values on the legend to better fit in the space
provided on all maps. I gave the inset maps borders and their own scale bars to better
visualize the area and I formatted the area around the text for ease of reading.
Results
According to the Average Number of Surface Mining Employees map and the
Surface Mine Production Distribution map, there is a far greater correlation to
production and greater of number of workers than there is to mine distribution and
number of workers. This indicates that the amount a mine produces is a better indicator
or workforce rather than the number of mines per state. There are more underground
mines than there are surface mines, and although this isnt backed by facts, I speculate
that the surface mines are larger than the underground mines. There is and has been,
more surface mines in the west than there has in the east. There are very few mines of
any kind in the western portion of the United States but the ones that are there are quite
large. There are significantly fewer mines in operation now than there was in 1994.
Continued This may be due to the efficiency of having fewer larger mines than
several small mines. Overall, the coal industry is still a strong industry with fewer, more
productive mines now than there was in the 1900s.
Coal in the United States

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Maps
Coal in the United States

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Coal in the United States

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