Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Groundwater in Open-Pit Coal Mining: A Case Study from Baorixile Coal Mine, Hailaer Basin, China

Abstract

Groundwater distribution influenced by mining activities is hard to be tracked due to the lack of accurate and real-time monitoring data. To address the groundwater dynamic change data under the mining conditions of open-pit coal mines, a three-dimensional automatic observation network of groundwater was constructed, and this observation network takes open-pit as the center, showing a radioactive distribution, based on hydrogeological conditions, and observes different aquifers. The data was analyzed by integrating hydrology, mining activity, and meteorological data. Analytic hierarchy process was adopted to reveal the underground disturbance influencing factors, and suggestions for groundwater protection were given. The results show that the dynamic variations of the groundwater with time can be divided into 3 types (precipitation affected, unaffected type, and mining affected types). The drainage operation during the open-pit mining triggered the drop of groundwater level, resulting in a cone of depression. The maximum drawdown of the central groundwater level was 60 m. And the disturbance mainly occurred in the mining area where the maximum groundwater disturbance radius was 8 km. Artificial drainage was the main disturbance factor of groundwater, and the range of groundwater level drop within the disturbance radius was closely related to the distance from the open-pit coal mine and the drainage volume. The closer the distance to the mines and the higher the drainage volume led to the deeper the groundwater level drop. This study shows the importance of the three-dimensional observation network of groundwater and provides a good reference for groundwater resources protection and ecological restoration in open-pit coal mines.

Progress of Mine Land Reclamation and Ecological Restoration Research Based on Bibliometric Analysis

“…For example, in China, there are many studies on LRER in coal mining areas, and the research areas are mainly concentrated in ecologically fragile areas in Northwest China [4,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] and high water level areas in Eastern China [6,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]. The research focuses include reclamation of open-pit coal mines [8,38,39,[53][54][55][56][57][58], reclamation of coal mining subsidence sites [7,51,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]…”

Effects of groundwater level changes on soil characteristics and vegetation response in arid and semiarid coal mining areas

“…Exploitation of coal mines in arid and semiarid regions often leads to signi cant declines in regional GWT, drying up of surface water (including lake disappearance), land subsidence, and extinction of vegetation species (Du et al, 2022;Hu et al, 2019;Lian et al, 2021). The evolution of the geological ecological environment in coal mines represents a comprehensive response of human activities to the structural and functional damage in icted on these systems (Fu et al, 2024;Mei et al, 2023; Z.…”