Author(s)

Haochen Yu, Shouguo Mu, Jing Hou, Zhengfu Bian, Jiu Huang, Shaogang Lei and Hao Chen

Corresponding Author

Shouguo Mu

ABSTRACT

The ecological environment of the Loess Plateau is fragile. Land degradation could be easily caused due to the high-intensity mining surface disturbance, resulting in ecological damage and environmental pollution. Xunyao mining area was taken as a study area. Three main characteristics of vegetation coverage, desertification, and soil erosion were selected for Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based on the NDVI value. According to the weighted result, the land degradation classification model was constructed, and the land degradation results were obtained and graded. The main conclusions include (1)Soil erosion, vegetation coverage and desertification account for the external characterization weight of 0.6966:0.1828:0.1206. While soil erosion is the main characterization. (2)In 2013~2017, vegetation coverage, desertification, soil erosion, and land degradation all showed good in the southeast but poor in the northwest. (3) The low vegetation coverage and the desertification are mainly concentrated in the mining area; soil erosion not only affects the scope of the coal mine but also the range of the unmined area. Land degradation mainly caused by the surface disturbance for coal mining and the special fragile ecological environment in the Loess Plateau. The study could provide theoretical support for ecological restoration in the coal mine area.

KEYWORDS

Land degradation, remote Sensing, classification model