Abstract
Coal production will cause serious damage to regional vegetation, especially in ecologically fragile grasslands. It is the consensus of all major countries to conduct vegetation restoration and management monitoring in areas damaged by coal production. This paper compares the adaptability of different data sources and different vegetation indices to grassland mining areas and proposes a normalized environmental vegetation index (NEVI) suitable for vegetation monitoring in grassland mining areas. Based on the Landsat and Sentinel data from 2005 to 2019, this paper uses NEVI to monitor the vegetation destruction and restoration of the Shengli mining area. The main result is that the vegetation restoration work in the Shengli mining area started in 2007 and was gradually carried out in subsequent years. The restoration effect of vegetation is significantly better in the east than in the west. The NEVI of the vegetation in the east can reach, or exceed, the level of natural vegetation in the same period. The restoration of vegetation degradation in some areas requires strengthening of management and maintenance measures.
Highlights
Coal is an important source of energy in the world [1] and the economy of some regions is highly dependent on coal production, which will likely last for a long time [2]
The study puts forward the normalized environmental vegetation index (NEVI) vegetation index for the first time, so it is necessary to verify our research results
Google Earth historical images are used for research results verification (Google, Mountain View, CA, USA)
Summary
Coal is an important source of energy in the world [1] and the economy of some regions is highly dependent on coal production, which will likely last for a long time [2]. Coal mining will inevitably cause large-scale disturbance to the land [3] and severe damage to the vegetation, soil, and landscape of the original landform–a serious threat to the ecological security of the region [4,5]. It is the consensus of major countries to implement vegetation restoration projects for dumps and mines formed by coal mining [3,6,7,8]. Vegetation monitoring in mines will help us understand the vegetation status and provide a basis for scientific decision-making on vegetation restoration in the mining area and maintenance of the restoration area
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