Abstract:
China is the largest producer and consumer
of coal in the world. The extraction of coal is increasing intensively to meet the needs of the ever-increasing
population and industries. However, coal mining has
resulted in environmental changes, including deforestation, air, water, soil, and landform deterioration.
This study investigates the impact of mining on the
environment in Ruqigou coalfield by utilising in situ
and remote sensing data. Field data collected include
temperature, gas compositions, and water samples.
Multi-temporal Landsat data of 1991, 2003, and 2019
were used in monitoring the impact of mining on different land covers, especially vegetation. A supervised
classification was performed to assess the changes in
land cover. In order to track the changes in vegetation,
normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) was employed. To study the changes in coal fire areas, thermal anomalies were extracted from the thermal infrared data using a dynamic thresholding technique. The
results of in situ analyses show that water quality is
unfit for domestic, industrial, and agricultural use. All
the gas sampling sites emit noxious gases such as CO2,
CO, NO2 and degrade the local air quality. The classified maps and vegetation indices show a significant
decrease in vegetation. The thermal anomalies show
an increase in fire areas over the years. Thus, it could
be concluded that the conjunctive use of field-based
measurements and remote sensing data can be a powerful tool for gaining a comprehensive understanding
of the environmental impacts associated with largescale mining.
