Abstract
Land subsidence, which has caused large-scale settlement loss and farmland degradation, was regarded as the main constraint for land reclamation in the High Groundwater Coal Basins (HGCBs) in the eastern China plain. Both coal mining and agricultural production are important for regional development in this area. In general, the land reclamation direction in this area is greatly affected by the adequacy of filling materials and the land use demand of regional economic development. Taking seven coal mining subsided areas in Pei county, located in the eastern China plain, for example, this study proposed an integrated model (including the Limit Condition model, Logistic Regression model, Grey Linear Programming model and the conversion of land use and its effects at small regional extent (CLUE-S) model) to simulate and optimize the post-mining land use structure to meet the economic development needs of Pei county. Then, the post-mining land use structure under different scenarios, which were set based on the subsidence depth, were compared to explore the optimal collapse depth for separating the damaged land into the filling area and non-filling area. The landscape structure, ecological benefits, engineering quantity and reclaimed farmland area were used to compare the reclaimed land use structure of different scenarios. The results showed that the integrated model could efficiently simulate the reclaimed land use structure to meet the land demand for regional development. The optimal collapse depth for separating the damaged area into the filling area and non-filling area was 2.6 m. Currently, the reclaimed land use structure not only needs a low quantity of filling material, but also obtains a good landscape structure and elevated ecosystem services value. Furthermore, the reclaimed urban land was mainly distributed around Pei town, and the reclaimed farmland was mostly distributed in the area between Pei town and Weishan lake, which were consistent with the pattern of urbanization. The study provides valuable information for future land use plans for Pei county and will contribute to the methods of post-mining land reclamation in other HGCBs.
Highlights
It has been acknowledged that the mining industry supported national economic development, and caused a vast amount of negative impacts [1], such as soil production capacity loss [2], land occupation [3], air and water pollution [4], geological disasters [5], biodiversity reduction [6], etc
Note: p1, p2 represent the rural and urban population in 2030, respectively, which were deduced by the natural population growth index method, and the natural population growth rate was set as 8% referring to the statistic book of Pei county. m1 and m2 represent the lower and upper limits of the ratio of traffic and water conservancy land area and the area of urban land and other construction land, which were set as 0.46 and 0.55, referring to this proportion of Xuzhou city, respectively. b1, b2, b3 and b4 represent the labor force coefficients of cultivated land, garden land, forest land, and other agricultural land, which were set as 2.66, 7.5, 7.5 and 3.61, respectively [32]
We proposed an integrated model to simulate the reclaimed land use structure and determined the optimal collapse depth for separating the filling area and non-filling area
Summary
It has been acknowledged that the mining industry supported national economic development, and caused a vast amount of negative impacts [1], such as soil production capacity loss [2], land occupation [3], air and water pollution [4], geological disasters [5], biodiversity reduction [6], etc. China certainly could not avoid these problems These problems were even worse in the High Groundwater Coal Basins (HGCBs), where the mining industry and agricultural production were important for local development (called “Overlap Regions”) [7]. Underground mining in HGCB areas has disturbed the surface severely and resulted in large-scale land subsidence, leading to much ground settlement loss and farmland degradation [8,9,10]. As overlap regions are coupled with large populations, land subsidence aggravated the conflicts between land use and local social and economic development [11]. The complex and multiple problems in HGCB regions required land reclamation projects to resolve the land degradation and loss problems and to arrange residents’ living space and create a good land use ecosystem. It is necessary to develop a system of post-mining land use to support the needs of production, living and ecology demands in HGCBs
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