Coupling and coordination of coal mining intensity and social-ecological resilience in China

Abstract

Coal is an important global energy resource. However, the negative impacts of mining are important factors restricting the sustainable development of mining areas. Under the superimposed influences of different mining intensities, different natural ground conditions, and social-economic development, there are large differences in the restoration characteristics and response strategies for mining. To guide the development and utilization of coal resources and ecological restoration, the spatial distribution should be appropriately analyzed at the macroscale. Based on the web-crawler technology and multi-source remote sensing data, this paper attempted to estimate the mining intensity and the social-ecological resilience respectively at the county level, to divide the mining areas into nine regions in China. Based on the zoning results, differentiated strategies were proposed for ecological restoration and resource development and utilization in the various coal mining regions. The valuation results suggested that coal mines are widely distributed and abundant in China, mainly concentrated in the central, southwest and northwest regions. However, nearly half of the coal mining regions are with low resilience. Especially, high mining intensity-low resilience areas are concentrated in north China which account for 10.83%. These areas should receive special attention to prevent possible ecological risks and minimize economic effects. Social-ecological resilience measures system adaptation to coal mining disturbances, which can be regarded as the standard of mining intensity adjustment. In the future, local governments can try to combine ecological restoration and resource development strategies to provide support for the sustainable development of coal mining areas in China.