Science in Practice Portal

The South Central Coal Cultural Resource study was designed to correlate cultural data with the potential adverse impacts related to the development of coal mining.

Class I and II cultural resource inventories were conducted on 2,981,000 acres of federal lands consisting of 1,499,000 BLM and 1,482,000 Forest Service-administered lands. By BLM definition, Class I studies provide a review and synthesis of existing cultural resource information while Class II inventories identify and record, by sampling, all cultural resource sites within a study area.

Stratified by vegetation this Class II study inventoried 27,680 acres or nearly one percent of the total available acreage. The 168 randomly selected sample units produced 348 cultural sites.