Spatial-temporal evolution and driving factors of habitat quality in Xiangyu mining area, Feng River basin, north foot of Qinling Mountains of China

A series of ecological and environmental issues often occur in the coal resources and large-scale exploitation activities. The Qinling Mountains have been the most vulnerable ecological areas in China. This study aims to explore the temporal and spatial evolution of mine habitat quality in the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains for regional ecological protection and sustainable development. A systematic investigation was implemented to clarify the impact of human activities on the ecological environment of mining areas under small river basins. The land use pattern was extracted from the Xiangyu mining area in the Feng River basin, according to the remote sensing images in 1985, 2002, 2010, and 2022. The InVEST model and geographical detector were used to quantitatively analyze the habitat quality and driving factors. The results showed that the land use in the Xiangyu mining area was mainly from the dry land to the forest and industrial land from 1985 to 2022, where the transfer area of forest reached 18 245 505.71 m², indicating the remarkable project performance of returning farmland to forest and grassland. Large ranges of bare and cultivated land were occupied by the development of the urban economy after 2010, where the industrial land was expanded rapidly. The habitat quality index decreased from 0.50 to 0.49, whereas, the standard deviation increased from 0.06 to 0.09, indicating the decreasing habitat quality and the ever-expanding spatial difference. Medium and low habitat quality were concentrated mainly in the areas with bare and construction land. In addition, the overall average degree of habitat degradation decreased from 0.48 to 0.47, but the rapid expansion of industrial land continued to affect the surrounding forests. There was a high spatial consistency in the distribution of habitat quality, habitat degradation, and land use patterns. The geographical detector showed that the influence degree of driving factors on habitat quality was ranked in the descending order of the land use (0.82), DEM (0.40), temperature (0.31), precipitation (0.30), population (0.29), NDVI (0.26), GDP (0.22), slope (0.12), and aspect (0.11). Among them, land use was the main cause of the fragile ecological environment. The coupled influence of natural with human factors on the ecological environment was greater than that of single factors. The interaction between land use and natural factors showed a double-factor enhancement, illustrating habitat quality was the result of natural factors and human factors. Research on mining areas should focus mainly on the land use policy and the impact of natural factors on engineering activities. Timely measures should be taken after high-intensity engineering activities, such as industrial construction and mining areas. The vegetation can be reconstructed to restore the water quality in the watershed. This finding can provide the scientific reference for the evolution of the ecological environment in similar mining areas, thus promoting the optimization of landscape patterns and the construction of ecological civilization.