A Novel Mine-Specific Eco-Environment Index (MSEEI) for Mine Ecological Environment Monitoring Using Landsat Imagery

Abstract

The excessive exploitation of mineral resources will lead to environmental pollution, resource depletion, environmental disaster, and other problems. The contradiction between the environment and development, and the management of the ecological environment in mining areas are urgent p-problems to be solved. An ecological environment assessment is an important part of the ecological environment in a mining area. The accurate evaluation of the ecological environment is the premise behind environmental governance in a mining area. However, current ecological assessment indicators were not developed specifically for mine environment monitoring and, thus, cannot provide an effective and comprehensive assessment of the mineral environment. To this end, in order to improve the environmental monitoring performance in mining areas, a novel Mine-Specific Eco-Environment Index (MSEEI) was proposed, integrating factors from five main aspects associated with minerals, including temperature, vegetation, soil moisture, atmospheric environment, and mining scale. Meanwhile, a widely concerned mine—Luanchuan mine—was used as the case area to test the performance of our MSEEI. The results showed a significant correlation between RSEI and MSEEI (p < 0.01). The mean correlation achieved between RSEI and MSEEI was 0.91, which was much higher than the correlations between RSEI and enhanced vegetation index (EVI), soil moisture monitoring index (SMMI), normalized difference built-up and soil index (NDBSI), PM2.5 concentration (DI), and heat (LST). In addition, based on our long-term MSEEI results of Luanchuan mine from 1997 to 2021, the ecological status of Luanchuan mine showed a trend of first declining and then rising. Specifically, the MSEEI first declined from 0.85 to 0.77 between 1997 and 2012, and then rebounded to about 0.8 in recent years. The MSEEI exhibited a good applicability in the ecological assessment of mining areas. Our MSEEI can provide useful guidance for mine environment monitoring. MSEEI can directly reflect the ecological damage after mining, provide scientific guidance for the exploitation and utilization of mineral resources, and promote the protection and sustainable development of Earth’s resources and mine ecological environments.

Spatio-Temporal Heterogeneity of the Ecological Environment and Its Response to Land Use Change in the Chushandian Reservoir Basin

“…The NDBSI, calculated as the average of IBI and SI, can reflect the influence of soil dryness and human activities on the land cover ecosystem [26]. The formulas are as follows [43]:…”

Influence of large open-pit mines on the construction and optimization of urban ecological networks: A case study of Fushun City, China

“…Although mineral resources have contributed notable to China’s economic and regional development, they have also harmed the ecological security of the region [ 1 , 2 ]. During mining, particularly open-pit mining, vegetation, topsoil, and rock removal occupy and destroy land resources, thereby rapidly aggravating the fragmentation degree of the mining landscape [ 3 – 5 ], reducing regional habitat patch areas [ 6 , 7 ], and destroying the integrity of the mining ecosystem’s health and its normal ecological processes [ 8 ], as well as negatively affecting the ecological processes of whole cities.…”

Evolution and Spatiotemporal Response of Ecological Environment Quality to Human Activities and Climate: Case Study of Hunan Province, China

“…The main ideas for improving the RSEI include the following: (1) Appropriate subindicators are added to increase the suitability of the results for a study area. For instance, in mining environments, the mine-specific eco-environment index (MSEEI), constructed using the mining intensity index [28], can be added, and for forest ecological environments, the three-dimensional greenness remote sensing ecological index (TDRSEI) constructed using the forest canopy height [29] can be added. (2) Subindicators can be preprocessed to obtain more information.…”