Coal Seam Fire
A coal-seam fire is a burning of an outcrop or underground coal seam. Most coal-seam fires exhibit smouldering combustion, particularly underground coal-seam fires, because of limited atmospheric oxygen availability. Coal-seam fire instances on Earth date back several million years. Due to thermal insulation and the avoidance of rain/snow extinguishment by the crust, underground coal-seam fires are the most persistent fires on Earth and can burn for thousands of years, like Burning Mountain in Australia. Coal-seam fires can be ignited by self-heating of low-temperature oxidation, lightning, wildfires and even arson. Coal-seam fires have been slowly shaping the lithosphere and changing atmosphere, but this pace has become faster and more extensive in modern times, triggered by mining. Coal fires are a serious health and safety hazard, affecting the environment by releasing toxic fumes; reigniting grass, brush, or forest fires; and causing subsidence of surface infrastructure su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Maryland to its south, West Virginia to its southwest, Ohio and the Ohio River to its west, Lake Erie and New York (state), New York to its north, the Delaware River and New Jersey to its east, and the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario to its northwest via Lake Erie. Pennsylvania's most populous city is Philadelphia. Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 through a royal land grant to William Penn, the son of William Penn (Royal Navy officer), the state's namesake. Before that, between 1638 and 1655, a southeast portion of the state was part of New Sweden, a Swedish Empire, Swedish colony. Established as a haven for religious and political tolerance, the B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dawukou District
Dawukou District (, Xiao'erjing: ) is a district and the seat of the city of Shizuishan in the northwest of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China, bordering Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's China–Mongolia border, border with the country of Mongolia. ... to the north and northwest. It has a total area of , and a population of approximately 230,000 people. Characteristics Dawukou District is a well-known industrial region, and it has attracted considerable investment in recent years. The district's main projects vary greatly, and mainly include light polluting or non-polluting industries. The district's postal code is 753000. Administrative divisions Dawukou District has 10 subdistricts and 1 town. ;10 subdistricts * Changsheng Subdistrict (, ) * Chaoyang Subdistrict (, ) * Renmin Road Subdistrict (, ) * ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Satellite Imagery
Satellite images (also Earth observation imagery, spaceborne photography, or simply satellite photo) are images of Earth collected by imaging satellites operated by governments and businesses around the world. Satellite imaging companies sell images by licensing them to governments and businesses such as Apple Maps and Google Maps. History The first images from space were taken on Sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital flights. The US-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946, took one image every 1.5 seconds. With an Apsis, apogee of 65 miles (105 km), these photos were from five times higher than the previous record, the 13.7 miles (22 km) by the Explorer II balloon mission in 1935. The first satellite (orbital) photographs of Earth were made on August 14, 1959, by the U.S. Explorer 6. The first satellite photographs of the Moon might have been made on October 6, 1959, by the Soviet satellite Luna 3, on a mission to photograph the far side of the Moon. The Blue Marble ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coal Dust
Coal dust is a fine-powdered form of coal which is created by the crushing, grinding, or pulverizer, pulverization of coal rock. Because of the brittle nature of coal, coal dust can be created by mining, transporting, or mechanically handling it. Grinding or pulverizing coal to a dust form before combusting it improves the speed and efficiency of burning, which makes the coal easier to handle. However, coal dust is dangerous goods, hazardous to workers if it is suspended in air outside the controlled environment of grinding and combustion equipment. It poses the acute hazard of forming an explosive mixture in air and the chronic hazard of causing pulmonary illness in people who inhale excessive quantities of it. The distribution of the particle-size of coal dust is frequently measured in Mesh (scale), mesh. The British slang term for cheap fuel consisting of coal dust (slack) containing small lumps of coal (nuts) is wikt:nutty slack, nutty slack. Energy generation For use in the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Smithsonian (magazine)
''Smithsonian'' is a magazine covering science, history, art, popular culture and innovation. The first issue was published in 1970. History The history of ''Smithsonian'' began when Edward K. Thompson, the retired editor of ''Life'' magazine, was asked by then-Secretary of the Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley, to produce a magazine "about things in which the Smithsonian nstitutionis interested, might be interested or ought to be interested." Thompson later recalled that his philosophy for the new magazine was that it "would stir curiosity in already receptive minds. It would deal with history as it is relevant to the present. It would present art, since true art is never dated, in the richest possible reproduction. It would peer into the future via coverage of social progress and of science and technology. Technical matters would be digested and made intelligible by skilled writers who would stimulate readers to reach upward while not turning them off with jargon. We would fin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a resistant layer of harder rock, like sandstone or limestone, forming a caprock that protects the flat summit. The caprock may also include dissected lava flows or eroded duricrust. Unlike a ''plateau'', which is a broader, elevated region that may not have horizontal bedrock (e.g., Tibetan Plateau), a mesa is defined by flat-lying strata and steep-sided isolation. Large, flat-topped plateaus with horizontal strata, less isolated and often part of extensive plateau systems, are called '' tablelands''. A ''butte'' is a smaller, eroded mesa with a limited summit, while a '' cuesta'' has a gentle dip slope and one steep escarpment due to tilted strata.Duszyński, F., Migoń, P. and Strzelecki, M.C., 2019. ''Escarpment retreat in sedim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Butte
In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French language, French word , meaning 'Hillock, knoll' (of any size); its use is prevalent in the Western United States, including the Southwestern United States, southwest where (Spanish language, Spanish for 'table') is used for the larger landform. Due to their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. To differentiate the two landforms, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height. Formation Buttes form by weathering and erosion when hard caprock overlies a layer of less resistant rock (geology), rock that is eventually worn away. The harder rock on top of the butte resists erosion. The caprock provide ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clinker (waste)
Clinker is a generic name given to waste from industrial processes, particularly those that involve smelting metals, welding, burning fossil fuels and use of a blacksmith's forge, which commonly causes a large buildup of clinker around the tuyere. Clinker often forms a loose, dark deposit consisting of waste materials such as coke (fuel), coke, coal, slag, charcoal, and Gritstone, grit. Clinker often has a glassy look to it, usually because of the formation of molten Silicon dioxide, silica compounds during processing. Clinker generally is much denser than coke, and, unlike coke, generally contains too little carbon to be of any value as fuel. It is also applied to the byproduct of combustion and heating by those who use anthracite or lignite coal-fired boilers. Clinkers can occur naturally, for example in underground deposits of coal that have been altered by heat from coal-seam fires and nearby molten magma; volcanic clinkers are jagged pieces of lava that look similar to in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wildfire
A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire (Bushfires in Australia, in Australia), desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, Peat#Peat fires, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire. Some natural forest ecosystems Fire ecology, depend on wildfire. Modern forest management often engages in prescribed burns to mitigate fire risk and promote natural forest cycles. However, controlled burns can turn into wildfires by mistake. Wildfires can be classified by cause of ignition, physical properties, combustible material present, and the effect of weather on the fire. Wildfire severity results from a combination of factors such as available fuels, physical setting, and weather. Climatic cycles with wet periods that create substantial fuels, followed by drought and heat, of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |