Research on land use/cover change of opencast coal mining area of Pingshuo Shanxi

Abstract

The Pingshuo open-cast coal field is located in the Shuozhou district, north of Shanxi, China. It is a part of wider region known as the Black Triangle. Open-cast coal mining has caused total destruction of original ecosystems, as well as changes of relief and also land use/cover changes (LUCC) in the mining areas. This paper presents a case study on land use/cover change , and analyzes the LUCC extracted from the TM (ETM+) image data taken from 1986, 1990, 1995, 2002, and 2005. Here comes the results: With the turning of the structure of the mining area land from undisturbed land to land both undisturbed and disturbing, there is the coexistence of undisturbed land, disturbing land and reclaimed land; On the quantity side, from 1986 to 2005, the area of undisturbed land has reduced from 36601.0 ha to 33379.51 ha , while the area of disturbing land has increased from 911.25 ha to 3206.36 ha , and the reclaimed land from 0 ha to 926.46 ha. The area of original land will decrease to 4425.8 ha, as predicted; The spatial evolution, under the obvious limitations of mining order and planning, is presenting a gradient change form from undisturbed land to disturbing land and then to reclaimed land, that is, the spatial scale of reclaimed land is expanding while the undisturbed land is narrowing gradually.