Is my English not good enough, or does reading this feel like having a stroke?

It is grammatical but very clumsy. The dominance (defined by the amount of rock moved) of open pit mining stems from (the verb to stem from: to arise from, be caused by) the necessary removal of overburden (the noun, in this technical context) Overburden is often drilled and blasted.

It's really badly written, but I think I understand it. Open Pit mining moves a lot of rock, because you need to remove all of the rock that's on top of the cool rock you actually want. "The dominance... stems in terms of \[whatever\],to a large extent, from..." is just gory, a real carcrash of a sentence. I think most readers would struggle with it, and I think a good editor should have kicked it around a bit before it was published.

It's just a complicated sentence. It means "Open pit mining operations move the most rock mostly because of the need to remove overburden. This overburden is often drilled or blasted."

it's badly written.

Non native here. I’m able to separate the components of the sentence, and I can roughly understand the sentence. Once you know to connect “stems” and “from”, it reads slightly better. But I’m not sure how to translate it in my mother tongue and make it smooth.

It's not just you; it's not a great sentence.

I'm sure someone who knows about mining can parse this sentence, but you're absolutely right in that this reads like someone's having a stroke. If you wrote this in a (first-language) English exam you would absolutely be penalised for it.

I think the word 'stems' should be moved to either before or after "to a large extent". But I can understand it as: * The dominance of open pit operations stems from the necesarry removal of overburden. * This 'dominance' is in terns of amounts of rock handled. * Removal of overburden is a large, but not only, factor. * Overburden is often drilled and(/or?) blasted.

I think the main issue with this sentence is how much is in between "stems" and "from." Usually those words need to go together. Also it's weird to start with the word dominance, when what the dominance is referring to is not defined. Here's my attempt to rewrite it: In terms of the amounts of rock handled, the dominance of open pit operations, to a large extent, stems from the necessary removal of overburden, which is often drilled and blasted.

It a bit dry, but typical academic tone.

I think it is phrased fine and was easy to understand. When measuring by amount of rocks handled, open pit operations dominate (compared to other kinds of operations?). The need to remove overburden (due to the nature of what an open pit is?) contributes to a large extent the amount rocks handled in open pit operations. Had to make some contextual guesses since I don't really know anything about mining, so I might be wrong about the technical aspects of my explanation.

This is a very inelegant sentence.

The technical term for this is gobbledegook.

A comma after stems would help a lot

The word order is poorly chosen and obscures the fact that “in terms of rock handled” is trying to explain what “the dominance of open pit mining” means.  This might be an editing error rather than intention. This would be better as “The dominance of open pit mining, in terms of rock handled, stems to a large extent from the necessary…”

Just moving stems so it is adjacent to from, will solve so many problems here

They use some jargon here, which can be tricky. I'm not 100% sure what it's supposed to mean, to be honest. What I THINK it's supposed to mean is that open-pit mining is the dominant mining practice if you're measuring in the amount of rocks moved, and that has to do with having to remove the rocks that are left from being drilled and blasted. They added a lot of words they didn't need, so it sounds like it might be an academic paper or a paper written by a student.

I had to slow down and reread a couple of times to get through it. It's very clumsy and poorly written. I would write it as ; The dominance of open pit mining operations stems ( in terms of the amounts of rock handled ) largely from the necessary removal of overburden that is often drilled and blasted.

After reading this sentence several times, I find that placing the “in terms of…” part at the beginning of the sentence can make it much easier to follow, as some of you have already mentioned: In terms of the amounts of rock handled, the dominance of open pit operations stems to a large extent from the necessary removal of overburden, which is often drilled and blasted.

The dominance of open pit operations stems—in terms of the amounts of rock handled—to a large extent, from the necessary removal of overburden (which is often drilled and blasted).

The ugliness of this sentence stems, in terms of flow disrupted, to a large extent, from the unnecessary cascade of interrupting equivocal clauses, which are often leaving my ears drilled and blasted.

Too many embedded and dependent clauses makes writing 'dense'. Don't feel bad. Academic books are full of such examples. 

“The dominance of open pit mining stems (in terms of the amount of rock handled), to a large extent, from the necessary removal of overburden — which is often drilled and blasted.”

That sounds like it was either written by AI or someone trying to sound more intelligent than they are. It's very clumsy and confusing.

I don't understand it clearly but I think I would with more context. I'm not sure what they mean by "dominance," perhaps simply "dominating in terms of amount of rock moved," which would make sense. Open pit operations probably do move the most amount of rock.

I feel like moving 2 of those phrases forward would make it easier to read: In terms of the amounts of rock handled, to a large extent, the dominance of open pit operations stems from the necessary removal of overburden, which is often drilled and blasted.

a comma after, "stems" makes it a lot more comprehensible.

If you are having difficulty following the logic of a longer sentence, try ignoring the parts separated by commas. That simplifies the highlighted sentence to: "The dominance of open pit operations stems in terms of the amounts of rock handled from the necessary removal of overburden." If I had written that sentence, I would have put "in terms of the amounts of rock handled" before the verb, maybe like this: "The dominance of open pit operations, in terms of the amounts of rock handled, stems from the necessary removal of overburden." Removing the moved clause from the sentence, we are left with "The dominance of open pit operations stems from the necessary removal of overburden." Once you understand that, then you can look at the rest of the sentence for additional details.

The lack of a comma after 'stems' is probably causing the confusion, but even still, sentences with nested clauses like this are just difficult in general. This sentence could easily be rewritten to make it less frustrating to read just by moving 'stems'. > The dominance of open pit operations in terms of the amounts of rock handled, to a large extent, stems from the necessary removal of overburden...

Nah I had a stroke too.

i couldn’t finish reading the sentence 🤦‍♀️

Going to uni and having to read textbooks really highlight how many well educated authors don't know how to fucking write a coherent sentence. The information is good but the writing is horrendous. This reads like half my law textbooks like bro use your own words you dont have to try to sound smart all the time.

I suppose the alternative rephrasing that's most loyal to the text and with a clearer flow is this: >In terms of the amounts of rock handled, the dominance of open pit operations stems largely from the necessary removal of overburden, which is often drilled and blasted. The phrase "*to a large extent"* is replaced here by "*largely"* for better brevity. They mean the same anyway.

I understand it but I don't like it. It's trying to say "Open pit operations move most of that rock because the overburden needs to be removed."

It isn't incorrect, but the person who wrote it isn't the best writer out there. Very awkwardly phrased.

It's a poorly constructed sentence.

It’s just typical academic writing in USA. Better style would be two sentences. But engineer types do not always follow good style. Government folks are worse.

It’s grammatical but hard even for natives, this uses turns of phrase that are kind of discipline specific. In this case: mining.

That seems incoherent. If you parse the sentence, the first part "The dominance of open pit operations in terms of the amounts of rock handled" seems to be the object, and we're expecting a subject or adjective phrase to arrive at some point, but it never does. The object just keeps growing larger and we never get to any point about it. However, that may be because I'm ignorant of some esoteric term in there. If "stems" is a verb here then the sentence could make sense and everything that follows is the subject.