Coal-Mining Industry as a Forming Factor of Social, Cultural, and Linguistic Environment of Kuzbass as Resource Region of Siberia

Abstract

The coal-mining industry ensures its sustainable development by forming the complex regional environment, embracing urban, social, cultural, linguistic, and academic components. The environment eventually exerts itself in a number of outcomes. It makes up a multiform regional cogniosphere (i.e. noosphere, ideosphere, logosphere, semiosphere, conceptosphere) responsible for increasing the regional population’s awareness of the coal mining specifics, as well as forms positive attitudes to the mining sector of economy and mining professions, and finally forges the regional identity. The environment is responsible for increasing the popularity of professional coal-mining education which enables the stability and survivability of the mining professions and efficient personnel change in due time. The environment affects adjacent economic spheres (tourism, service, recreation, production, etc.) so as they can make use of the regional specific features and diversify their products and services. Thus, the coal-mining industry and the above mentioned environment form a closed-cycle system whose constituents affect each other mutually and ensure efficient coexistence and development. The cultural, linguistic, and urban environment of the region can be viewed as additional means of supporting and promoting sustainable development of the regional economy and culture through its manipulative potential.

Spatiotemporal Variability of Human Disturbance Impacts on Ecosystem Services in Mining Areas

“…On the one hand, mining activities have significant negative impacts on the surrounding ecosystems through either direct effects (e.g., loss of vegetation [23], soil degradation [1,24], and water quality pollution [25][26][27]) or indirect effects (e.g., social conflicts [12,28,29]). However, mining sites also have substantial ecological, geological, and cultural value [23,[30][31][32][33][34]. On the other hand, the specific restoration method (e.g., Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 [35] and fast colonizing species [36]) alleviates soil destabilization and water-quality impairment to cause herbaceous communities to proliferate rapidly and widely in mines, while resulting in a poor growing environment for native trees that greatly hinder forest regeneration [37].…”

Contribution of tourism to diversification and development of a green economy

“…The toponym Kuzbass (the Kuznetsk coal basin, proposed by geologist P. A. Chikhachev in the 19th century) became the second official name of the Kemerovo region, although the borders of the Kuznetsk coal basin do not coincide with the administrative boundaries of the region [8]. And both these titles became the official synonyms only in December 21, 2018 [9].…”