No abstract

Coal is one of the primary sources of energy in India, which are generally extracted through open cast mining. However, coal mining activities, particularly open cast mining methods are known to result in adverse environmental impacts such as vegetation loss, air pollution, ground water contamination along with changes in land use land cover (LULC) features. Hence, reliable temporal data on the impact of mining activities are required to aid in mine reclamation and management efforts. Assessment of LULC changes over the last two decades was carried out in Ramagundam coalfield, using Google Earth Engine (GEE) integrated with Geographical Information System (GIS). Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 multispectral satellite data from 2001 to 2021 with <5% cloud cover was used to classify LULC classes. The different land use classes are classified in GEE through supervised classification using Classification And Regression Tree (CART) classifier. The study indicates that mining area has increased to 298% (from 15.20 km 2 to 60.50 km 2 ) from 2001 to 2021 and significantly reduces other classes. The outcome of this study could be useful to the coal industry/company to carefully monitoring the effects of mining. This study will aid policy makers and environmentalists in understanding nature of change in LULC features in the area.

The results of the Rock-Eval pyrolysis and petrological investigation carried out on coal samples from the Chintalapudi sub-basin of the Pranhita- Godavari basin have been discussed to identify the assessment of the maturity, type, and quantity of organic matter and interpret the depositional environment. Petrographically these coals are enriched in vitrinite (40.0%-60.7%) followed by liptinite (7.3%-26.0%) and inertinite (9.3%-24.0%) macerals.TOC concentrations range from 17.54% to 64.97%. S1 ranges from 0.30% to 1.63% and S2 ranges from 11.70% to 138.06% are considered to be good source rocks. The Tmax values of the Chintalapudi sub-basin coals are found to be between 420°C to 428°C, indicating an immature source rock for the production of oil. The coal samples have an average HI of 157 mg HC/g TOC and VRo of 0.30% placing them in the Type III gas kerogen range. HI, and OI values reveal that the samples of organic matter composition mostly follow the evolutionary route of mixed Type II/III kerogens and are contributed by terrestrial plants which is the main source of the organic matter. The GI (1.67-5.95) and TPI (2.75-47.14)values favour the existence of wet moor with moderate to severe floods with short periods of alternateoxic and anoxic moor environments due to the high concentration of vitrinite that allowed for adequate tissue preservation. Keywords: Kerogen, Rock-Eval Pyrolysis, Petrography, Chintalapudi Sub-basin