ASSESSMENT OF LAND RECLAMATION AND LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES IN OPEN CAST COAL MINES OF KORBA, CHHATTISGARH, INDIA

Abstract

Land is the most important natural resource which embodies soil, water, flora-fauna and total ecosystem. All human activities are based on the land which is scarcest natural resource in our country. Mining is a site specific industry and it could not be shifted anywhere else from the location where mineral occurs. It is a fact that surface mining activities do effect the land environment due to ground breaking. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reclaim and restore the mined out land for its productive use for sustainable development of mining. Open cast coal mining and land reclamation is the dominant factor for land cover land use change. In Katghora Tehsil of Korba District. Accurately quantification of the expansion of mining activities is important for assessing how this LCLUC affects ecosystem services such as aesthetics, biodiversity, we used Landsat imagery from 2000, 2010 and 2020 to map the extent of open cast coal mines and land reclamation area, we employed standard image processing and classification techniques in conjunction with a temporal decision tree and GIS maps of mine area to map active and reclaimed mines and track changes through time. For the entire study area, active surface mine extent was highest in between 2010-2020 near about 1.33% area has been increased. And lowest in 2000-2010 near about 0.60% has been changed. Land cover conversion to mines and then reclaimed area after 2010 was almost exclusively from forest plantation. Near about 1.38 % area has been converted into forest plantation area for land reclamation. Accuracy levels for mined and reclaimed cover was above 80% for all time periods, and was generally above 80% for mapping active and reclaimed mines separately, especially for the later time periods in which good accuracy assessment data were available. Our results evidenced the ability of the method under investigation in deriving highly and accurate land use land cover change maps, able to identify the mining areas as well as those in which excavation was replaced by natural vegetation. All in all, the proposed technique showed considerable promise towards the support of a sustainable environmental development and prudent resource management. This work has been attempted to monitor the land reclamation area using geospatial techniques. because it provides better accuracy and decision support system to make a sustainable development of natural resources.