Coal is produced in Appalachia via both surface and underground mining. Mining methods have changed and advanced over nearly two centuries, improving worker safety and environmental performance. Reclamation was not practiced in the early days of mining, but laws to regulate mining were enacted and performance standards have been developed since the 1960s. Today, mining operations are heavily regulated and the mining and reclamation processes are fully integrated. Mine planning and design, as well as reclamation procedures to establish a suitable post-mining land use, are now required. Reclamation includes landscape reconstruction, mine-site revegetation, and associated activities intended to avoid or mitigate environmental impacts. Today’s coal miners manage mine spoils to limit water contamination by acid mine drainage or other dissolved constituents. Reclamation of coal surface mines is intended to prepare the land for post-mining land use, usually hayland-pasture, forest, or wildlife habitat. Coal mining in Appalachia has had extensive impacts on the landscape and those impacts continue today despite federal and state reclamation regulatory requirements, but at far-reduced levels relative to early mining.