Detecting Decadal Land Cover Changes in Mining Regions based on Satellite Remotely Sensed Imagery: A Case Study of the Stone Mining Area in Luoyuan County, SE China

Mining regions often undergo abrupt and extensive land coverchanges that pose serious environmental and social impacts.In this study, decadal land cover changes in stone mining areas of Luoyuan County, southeastern China from 2001 to2010 were examined based on multi-source satellite remote sensing imageries including ALOS, SPOT2, and Landsat-7.Object-oriented classifications combined with decision tree and retrospective approaches are employed to extract land cover and change information for the ten-year period. The study results show that the stone mining area nearly quadrupled over the ten-year period. It is found that the digging area accounts for only 14.3 percent of the stone mining region. However, mine dumps and tailings occupy the majority of the region, a remarkable characteristic distinct from other mining regions. Reclaimed land in the mined region is very limited.An evident increase in the extent of urbanized land cover is also observed in the study area for the last decade.