Coal has been the primary energy resource that made rapid economic and social development in China possible. Yet, its extraction in the form of open鄄field mining operations changed landscape patterns considerably and created a suite of environmental and ecological problems. Therefore, it is very important to understand these landscape pattern dynamics and their effects on ecosystem processes. While open pit coal mining is one of the fast growing human modifications of the Earth忆 s surface which transforms landscapes and ecological functioning, studies in applied ecology and restoration ecology examining the effects of this human activities have been lacking. We conducted a field study in the 10 km buffer around the landscape of Zhungger Heidaigou in Inner Mongolia where large open mine operations are presently underway. Within this landscape land use / land cover changed substantially between 1987 and 2010. We related these human transformed
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