Captions for Front Cover Photos

Captions for Front Cover Photos Top Photo: View looking east at the burning Dębińsko Coal Mine waste pile in Czerwionka-Leszczyny, Rybnicki County, southwest Silesia, Poland. The underground Dębińsko mine (not visible here) is about 700 m to the west of this dump. The dump has ignited by spontaneous combustion for over 30 years in different locations that burn themselves out. Pennsylvanian bituminous coal recovered from unburnt and burned-out waste (reddish-white colored area) in the dump is excavated and used for highway construction, railroad ballast, and in the ceramics and building-construction industries. The black-colored rock covered with the white crust in the foreground is coal waste that is covered with bitumen and overlain by salammoniac. These nucleated on the coal waste during combustion. Photo by Ádám Nádudvari , 2016. Bottom-Left Photo: Lower Permian bituminous (W-III grade) coal (504°C), possibly ignited by spontaneous combustion in an open pit mine at Bharat Coking Coal Limited, Bokapahari, Dhanbad district, Jharkhand State, Jharia coalfield, India. To extinguish the fire, the burning coal was removed with a hydraulic excavator and put into a nearby human-made pond. Photo by Varinder Saini, 2014. Bottom-Second from Left Photo: A thrips collected in November of 2012 near a gas vent in St. Ignatius Cemetery at the Centralia Mine Fire, Pennsylvania, USA. This microarthropod and others found at Centralia and at the Healy Mine Fire, Alaska, are discussed in Chapter 2 of this book. Photo by Yelena White and Glenn B. Stracher, 2016. Bottom-Third from Left Photo: A smoldering peat fire in a 40,000-ha peatland in the Wicklow Mountains, ­Ireland. This burn is on the Kippure House Estate, adjacent to the Wicklow Mountains National Park and near the Liffey Head bog complex along the floodplain of the River Liffey. It is part of a larger Special Area of Conservation designated for its mosaic of peatland habitats. Drainage cuts were made in the peat during World War II, and the peat was mined for use as a fuel. Ongoing drainage cuts were made over the years for commercial forestry of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) and for plantings on the Kippure House Estate. Because of the drainage, the 50–100 cm thick top layer of peat dried out and periodically caught fire over the years when vegetation fires of questionable origin ignited the peat. The dead trees at the center of the photo remain from a peat fire that spread through this area for about a week in April of 2000. It was extinguished by the National Parks and Wildlife Staff, Coillte Forestry, the Fire Service, Civil Defense, and Irish Army. Drainage is ongoing, as can be seen by the 15-cm cut into the peat at the center of the photo. In 2015, a vegetation fire spread throughout this area and ignited the peat 24 h before this photo was taken. The living trees in the background are on the Coronation Plantation, in the Wicklow Mountains National Park. The River Liffey, visible in the photo, flows between the Kippure House Estate and Coronation Plantation. Photo by Nuria Pratt, 2015. Bottom-Right Photo: Land occupied by the Datong Mining Group Co., LTD., Shanxi Province, northern China. At the Tashan Coal Mine, which belongs to the Datong Group, vertical shafts near the blue-colored gas-pumping station, visible in the distant left, are used to move explosive methane from underground mined-out gob areas. The gas is transferred through the metal pipes and preferentially put into storage tanks so it can be sold or else discharged into the atmosphere. The coal currently mined underground in this area is Permian coking coal (low ash, low-sulfur bituminous). Both underground coal-mine and coal-outcrop fires occur in this area. Removing the explosive methane helps reduce the risk of a mining catastrophe. Photo by Jianwei Cheng, 2017.