Images: Google Earth with a cause

Here is a satellite view of the Appalachian Mountains in Island Creek, Ky., flattened by mountaintop removal by the coal industry after 2004, Appalachian Voices says. Island Creek is one of the featured mountains in the advocacy group's National Memorial of Mountains layer on Google Earth, which contains a first-hand story by a Kentucky resident whose family home is at the foot of an area called Hylton Knob.

Photo by Google Earth