Human activities such as mining, agriculture, and urbanization have resulted in severe, large‐scale alteration to landform organization and associated geomorphic processes. The mountaintop mining (MTM) region of West Virginia, USA has experienced dramatic topographic alteration, by removing steep slopes and introducing plateau‐like areas at ridgelines and benches on valley fills. The resulting engineered landforms create synthetic landscapes, disconnected from previous geomorphic processes. Invoking the process domain concept, we compare differences in slope‐area relations, cumulative area distributions (CADs), elevation, slope, upslope accumulated area, and a slope*area product before and after mining to adjacent unmined sub‐catchments in five study basins. Differences in the slope‐area relation include a 42% slope reduction in low drainage areas, corresponding to hillslopes, unchanneled valleys, and debris flow dominated channels, which may fall below thresholds required for debris flow processes. The curved slope‐area relation that represents valley incision by debris flows is replaced by slope‐area relations that resemble basins where gullying and the stream power law dominate. Extremely high chemical weathering of unconsolidated valley fills materials may facilitate process domain shifts from debris flows to gullying and fluvial erosion. The characteristic power law scaling break in CADs that represents the headward limit of the channelized network is subdued in post‐mined sites and may reflect headward channelized network extension in mined basins. Slope‐area relations and CADs present a unique topographic signature of MTM activity, potentially providing an analytical approach to assess impacts on underlying geomorphic processes for other synthetic landscapes such as cities or large‐scale agricultural production.

中文翻译：

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识别美国西弗吉尼亚州综合景观中的地貌过程域

诸如采矿，农业和城市化之类的人类活动已导致地形组织和相关地貌过程发生了大规模的大规模变化。美国西维吉尼亚州的山顶采矿（MTM）地区经历了戏剧性的地形变化，方法是去除陡峭的斜坡并在山脊线和台阶上的山谷填充物上引入高原样区域。由此产生的工程地形创建了与先前的地貌过程断开连接的合成景观。引用过程域的概念，我们比较了五个研究盆地中临近的未开采子集水区开采前后的坡度-坡度关系，累积面积分布（CAD），高程，坡度，上坡坡度累积面积以及坡度*面积积的差异。 。坡域关系的差异包括在低流域的坡度减少了42％，对应于山坡，无通道的山谷和泥石流为主的通道，这些通道可能会低于泥石流过程所需的阈值。弯曲的坡度关系代表了由泥石流造成的山谷切口，被坡度关系代替，坡度关系类似于流域和河流水力定律占主导地位的盆地。未固结的山谷填充物材料的极高化学风化可能会促进过程域从碎屑流向沟壑和河流侵蚀的转变。在CAD中，代表通道化网络的前向极限的特征幂律缩放比例折断在开采后的站点中得到了缓解，并且可能反映了矿山盆地中通道化网络的向前扩展。斜坡关系和CAD显示了MTM活动的独特地形特征，