Analysis Of Land Reclamation And Ecological Capacity In Coal Mining Areas

As one of Chinese main energy resources, coal plays an irreplaceable strategic role in thenational economic construction. However, the development of the coal industry is at the expenseof the ecological environment such as land resources, biological resources and water resources,which will continue on a larger scale. Consequently, the ecological and environmental problemshave grown to be major events related to the ecological security and the economic, social andenvironmental sustainability of the mining areas.The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of the development andconstruction of coal mines on the ecological environment of mining areas and recovery degreesof the ecological capacity after manual intervention measures adopted. Taking Fenxi mining areaas a study case, the paper calculates the ecological capacity of the coal mining at the present andevaluates ecological environment influence of the coal mining areas exploited in accordancewith coal mining planning and measures the recovery degrees of the ecological capacity after theadoption of land reclamation measures in order to carry out the rational exploitation and layoutfor improving the sustainable development and the ecological security of the mining areas and totake land reclamation measures to the damaged land promptly. The main conclusions are asfollows:(1) Employ the ecological footprint method to calculate the ecological footprint andecological capacity of the Fenxi mining area in2010. The results show that the ecologicalfootprint of the Fenxi mining area in2010is2.9661hm2per capita and the ecological capacityexcluding the12%reserved for biodiversity protection is1.7439hm2per capita. The ecologicaldeficit reaches1.2222hm2per capita, which means that the impacts of the ecological andeconomic systems have exceeded the threshold of ecological capacity of the Fenxi mining area.The ratio of the per capita ecological capacity and the per capita ecological footprint is1:1.70.(2) Three scenarios are set up on the basis of the subsidence prediction of the Fenxi miningarea to evaluate its ecological capacity: a) only take the ecological capacity of the mining areasunder the natural recovery with no adoption of reclamation measures from the start of theplanning period to the end of the planning period into consideration; b) calculate the ecologicalcapacity after taking land reclamation measures under the principle of priority of restoring thecultivated lands; c) calculate the ecological capacity under the principle of improving theproductivity of ecologically productive lands. The results show that a) the per capita ecologicalcapacity of the mining areas with no adoption of reclamation measures is far below than thecurrent ecological capacity of the mining areas; b) the ecological capacity of improving the yieldfactor of the ecological productive land is larger than that of reclaimed lands in accordance with the dynamic balance of total cultivated land.(3) There is no doubt that land reclamation plays an important role in enhancing theecological capacity, improving the environment of the mining areas and securing the ecologicalsecurity and sustainable development of the mining areas. And the choice of reclamationmeasures is essential. Due to the different natural conditions and social conditions of thedamaged areas, land reclamation measures must be taken according to the local conditions. Inthis paper, the author presents some land reclamation measures for reference considering thenatural, social and other conditions of the Fenxi mining area.