Powder River Basin
The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very sparsely populated and is known for its rolling grasslands and semiarid climate. The basin is both a topographic drainage and geologic structural basin, drained by the Powder River, after which it is named, Cheyenne River, Tongue River, Bighorn River, Little Missouri River, Platte River, and their tributaries. The major cities in the area include Gillette and Sheridan, Wyoming and Hardin, Montana. In 2007, the region produced 436 million short tons (396 million tonnes) of coal, more than twice the production of second-place West Virginia, and more than the entire Appalachian region. The Powder River Basin is the largest coal-producing region in the United States. The region includes the Black Thunder Coal Mine, the most product ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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WildEarth Guardians
WildEarth Guardians is a non-profit grassroots environmental organization best known for its decade-long legal action against the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which culminated in 2011 with the Fish and Wildlife Service agreeing to move forward with protection for more than 800 species under the Endangered Species Act. WildEarth Guardians operates primarily in the Rocky Mountain, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States. As of January 2015, WildEarth Guardians has over 67,000 members. The headquarters are in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with field offices in Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; Missoula, Montana; Boise, Idaho; and Tucson, Arizona. Their legal teams and conservation work are supported by membership donations, private foundations, and government grants and contracts. The 2014 annual budget was about $4.1 million, of which 31% came from 57 private foundations and 30% from individual donations. The libertarian/conservative political advocacy group Ame ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coal Stratigraphy Powder River Basin
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is a type of fossil fuel, formed when dead plant matter decays into peat which is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous ( Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity. Some iron and steel-making and other industrial processes burn coal. The extraction and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Deckers Coal Mine In Montana
Deckers may refer to: * Deckers (surname) * Deckers, Colorado, United States * Deckers Creek, a river in West Virginia, United States *Deckers Outdoor Corporation, a footwear manufacturer *In the fictional ''Shadowrun'' universe, computer hackers are known as "deckers" See also *Decker (other) Decker can refer to: Names * Decker (surname) Places ;Antarctica * Decker Glacier ;Canada * Decker, Manitoba *Decker Lake (British Columbia), a lake near the town of Burns Lake, British Columbia *Decker Lake, British Columbia, a community on th ... * Dekkers {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Black Hills
The Black Hills is an isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, United States. Black Elk Peak, which rises to , is the range's highest summit. The name of the range in Lakota is '. It encompasses the Black Hills National Forest. It formed as a result of an upwarping of ancient rock, after which the removal of the higher portions of the mountain mass by stream erosion produced the present-day topography. The hills are so called because of their dark appearance from a distance, as they are covered in evergreen trees. American Indian tribes have a long history in the Black Hills and consider it a sacred site. After conquering the Cheyenne in 1776, the Lakota took the territory of the Black Hills, which became central to their culture. In 1868, the federal US government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, establishing the Great Sioux Reservation west of the Missouri River, and exempting the Black ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Western Interior Seaway
The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, or the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea (geology), inland sea that existed roughly over the present-day Great Plains of North America, splitting the continent into two landmasses, i.e. Laramidia to the west and Appalachia (landmass), Appalachia to the east. The ancient sea, which existed for 34 million years from the early Late Cretaceous (100 Year#SI prefix multipliers, Ma) to the earliest Paleocene (66 Ma), connected the Gulf of Mexico (then a marginal sea of the Central American Seaway) to the Arctic Ocean. At its largest extent, the seaway was deep, wide and over long. Origin and geology By the late Cretaceous, Eurasia and the Americas had separated along the south Atlantic, and subduction on the west coast of the Americas had commenced, resulting in the Laramide orogeny, the early phase of growth of the modern Rocky Mountains. The Western Interior ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ninth and longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin , 'chalk', which is abundant in the latter half of the period. It is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation . The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high Sea level#Local and eustatic, eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow Inland sea (geology), inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites, and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. The world was largely ice-free, although there is some evidence of brief periods of glaciation during the cooler first half, and forests extended to the poles. Many of the dominant taxonomic gr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Holocene
The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period. The Holocene is an interglacial period within the ongoing Ice age, glacial cycles of the Quaternary, and is equivalent to Marine isotope stages, Marine Isotope Stage 1. The Holocene correlates with the last maximum axial tilt towards the Sun of the Earth#Axial tilt and seasons, Earth's obliquity. The Holocene corresponds with the rapid proliferation, growth, and impacts of the human species worldwide, including Recorded history, all of its written history, technological revolutions, development of major civilizations, and overall significant transition towards urban culture, urban living in the present. The human impact on modern-era Earth and its ecosystems may be considered of global significance for th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cambrian
The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 486.85 Ma. Most of the continents lay in the southern hemisphere surrounded by the vast Panthalassa Ocean. The assembly of Gondwana during the Ediacaran and early Cambrian led to the development of new convergent plate boundaries and continental-margin arc magmatism along its margins that helped drive up global temperatures. Laurentia lay across the equator, separated from Gondwana by the opening Iapetus Ocean. The Cambrian marked a profound change in life on Earth; prior to the Period, the majority of living organisms were small, unicellular and poorly preserved. Complex, multicellular organisms gradually became more common during the Ediacaran, but it was not until the Cambrian that fossil diversity seems to rapidly ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phanerozoic
The Phanerozoic is the current and the latest of the four eon (geology), geologic eons in the Earth's geologic time scale, covering the time period from 538.8 million years ago to the present. It is the eon during which abundant animal and plant life has population growth, proliferated, evolutionary radiation, diversified and colonization (biology), colonized various ecological niche, niches on the Earth's surface, beginning with the Cambrian period when animals first developed hard shells that can be clearly preserved in the fossil record. The time before the Phanerozoic, collectively called the ''Precambrian'', is now divided into the Hadean, Archean, Archaean and Proterozoic eons. The time span of the Phanerozoic starts with the Cambrian Explosion, sudden appearance of fossilised evidence of a number of animal phylum (biology), phyla; the evolution of those phyla into diverse forms; the evolutionary history of plants, evolution of plants; the evolution of fish, arthropods ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coal-bed Methane
''Coalbed methane'' (CBM or coal-bed methane), coalbed gas, or coal seam gas (CSG) is a form of natural gas extracted from coal beds. In recent decades it has become an important source of energy in United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. The term refers to methane absorbed into the solid matrix of the coal. It is called "sweet gas" because of its lack of hydrogen sulfide. The presence of this gas is well known from its occurrence in underground coal mining, where it presents a serious safety risk. Coalbed methane is distinct from a typical sandstone or other conventional gas reservoir, as the methane is stored within the coal by a process called adsorption. The methane is in a near-liquid state, lining the inside of pores within the coal (called the matrix). The open fractures in the coal (called the cleats) can also contain free gas or can be saturated with water. Unlike much natural gas from conventional reservoirs, coalbed methane contains very little heavi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |