Estimatioin of ecological storage and its comprehensive response evaluation to land use transformation in coal mining area

Abstract: Coal is one of the main energy sources in China. However many years coal mining activities have accelerated the speed of regional land use change, which not only causes serious ecological environmental disasters, but also destroyed the structure and function of whole regional ecosystem. The response of ecological storage and conservation in the process of land use change plays an important part in guiding the exploitation of coal resources, optimizing the land resource use and protecting the ecological environment in coal mining areas. Eleven concentrated and coterminous coal mining areas in Shanxi Province, located in Changhe River Basin, were taken as a case. Based on the theory of ecological service and the data of land use of last 10 years with its related information, the area, distribution and the change direction for all the land use types in the mining area were analyzed, the ecological storage of 11 mines at different times were calculated on basis of evaluation index system, and finally the response of ecological storage to land use change in coal mining area was gained. It was found that Ecological Storage State (ESS) in the study area showed a downward trend. Not including Tian'anshenghua, the ESC of other areas exhibited varying degrees of degeneration and the degradation rate of mining areas was much higher than that of non-mining area. Ecological Storage Capacity(ESC)in the study was relatively good, and the ESC values of all regions (including 11 mining areas and 1 non-mining area) area were positive. Tian'anshenghuamine had the best ESC value. Nevertheless Tian'an Haitian mine was the worst; Ecological Storage Pattern (EP) values in all mine regions were negative, indicating that these areas have the low ecosystem diversity, and the ecosystem was under a very unstable state. Affected by coal mining in the nearby mining area, the EP value of non-mining area was also negative. In addition, the EP values of all the mining area were greater than that of thenon-mining area, which can reflect the adverse effects on the ecological environment from the coal mining. For Ecological Storage Condition (LC), Chengzhuang mine with the largest number of bare land in the study area had the highest LC. However, the mine of Tian'anweiding, Tian'anhaitian, Tian'anbiying, Tian'anshenghua and Tiantaiyuenan had LC of 0, because all land had been utilized. For the comprehensive response evaluation of the ecological storage to the land use change, more than half of the 12 regions (including 11 mining areas and 1 non-mining area) in this study had a third level of ecological storage, but all the 11 mines had higher ecological storage capacity. So there was a great possibility for them to improve ecological environment. This research could provide the basic data and application references for the ecological conservation planning in the mining area.