Ecological Restoration of a Loess Open-Cast Mining Area in China: Perspective from an Ecological Security Pattern

Abstract

Open-cast coal mining in China has developed rapidly due to its obvious advantages over underground mining. However, it may have negative ecological effects, such as biodiversity loss, water shortage, and soil erosion. Identifying and protecting the key areas with high importance for ecological sustainability are great challenges. The construction of an ecological security pattern (ESP) can improve landscape connectivity and reduce the fragmentation of ecological patches. Thus, it can be seen as an effective measure to protect regional ecological sustainability. In this study, taking the Pingshuo open-cast mining area as a case study area, ecological sources are identified through ecosystem structure and function, and corridors are extracted by constructing an ecological resistance surface, thus forming a valid ecological network. The results show that in 2018, the ESP in the study area included 11 sources with an area of 147.74 km2 and 17 corridors with a length of 92.11 km. Specifically, the ecological sources are mainly distributed in Taocun Township, Jingping Township, and Xiangyangbao Township. Among these 11 sources, sources 7 and 8 are reclaimed waste dump land, meaning that the land reclamation work in Pingshuo greatly promotes connectivity. Furthermore, dump 1 can be restored in the future by constructing three new corridors, which will greatly improve the landscape connectivity of Yuling Township. Overall, this study not only provides an effective framework for constructing and optimizing ESPs in ecologically fragile coal mining areas, but it also adds new insights to the concept of land reclamation in these areas.

Construction of Landscape Ecological Security Pattern in the Zhundong Region, Xinjiang, NW China

“…Most of the ecological nodes were located near construction land and roads, which had relatively fragile ecological functions, and they gradually spread from the vicinity of Lake Jiji in the south to Wucaiwan in the northwest and the nature reserves in the north. (3) In this study, the landscape ecological security pattern of Zhundong, including the ecological sources, ecological corridors, and ecological nodes, was constructed using the MSPA method and the MCR model. The results of this study lay a foundation for optimizing the landscape ecological security pattern in the study area and provides a scientific basis for the protective development and ecological management of local coal resources.…”

“…The regional ecological landscape has changed dramatically, and the pressure for ecological environmental protection has intensified, threatening green coal mining and ecological security in Zhundong. Thus, it is imperative to strengthen the ecological security protection in the study area [3,4].…”

Progress of Mine Land Reclamation and Ecological Restoration Research Based on Bibliometric Analysis

“…The publications of the top five countries accounted for 28.26%, 10.82%, 9.63%, 6.07%, and 3.52%, respectively, indicating those countries made the greatest contributions to the research on LRER. For example, in China, there are many studies on LRER in coal mining areas, and the research areas are mainly concentrated in ecologically fragile areas in Northwest China [4,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] and high water level areas in Eastern China [6,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]. The research focuses include reclamation of open-pit coal mines [8,38,39,[53][54][55][56][57][58], reclamation of coal mining subsidence sites [7,51,[59][60][61][62][63][64]…”

Coupling relationship between soil properties and plant diversity under different ecological restoration patterns in the abandoned coal mine area of southern China

“…China is the largest country of coal production, and coal is also the mainly energy resource in the nation's energy supply, such as power fuel and to generate electricity, and its dominance will continue for a long time (Ruan et al, 2022;Wu et al, 2020b;Yuan et al, 2022). Coal mining activities cause environmental damage, such as landscape fragmentation, species loss, vegetation elimination, soil degradation (Babí Almenar et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2022). Moreover, underground coal mining may cause land subsidence and produce large quantities of mine waste, having a irreversible damage to ecosystem development (Du et al, 2021;Lechner et al, 2016;Xu et al, 2023).…”