Land-Use Change and Vulnerability as a Result of Coal Mining Activities

Abstract

Because the environment is considered to be a resource in itself, it is worth characterizing and assessing in terms of such meaningful indicators as land use/cover change and aquifer vulnerability. This contribution aims to validate past and present spatially distributed data such as maps, aerial photographs, satellite images and other types of numerical or qualitative data, for the purpose of representing natural and human-induced processes that affect environmental quality. In areas of intense underground coal mining, systematic photo-interpretation of airborne and space-borne images can identify changes in land-cover through time that may reveal trends in mining development and its effects towards degradation or rehabilitation of the environment.

Two applications are discussed in which spatial data analysis contributes to the environmental characterization of an area of the Czech Republic that has been deeply affected by underground coal mining and by the industrial activities dependent on coal as a source of energy. Although the applications contain several aspects of generality for geo-environmental analyses, they also reveal a particular need for data-quality assessment within administrative and social conditions that only recently have allowed cartographic data and aerial photographs to become freely available. Hence, sensitivity analysis and reliability testing can lead to operational strategies in predictive modeling and in the necessary data capture.