Assessment of Land Cover Changes and Fragmentation of Mining Landscape using Geospatial Technology

Abstract

Mining plays an important role in economic development of Jharkhand, India.  Simultaneously, it also has significant negative impacts on the environment, ecology, and society. Geospatial technology enables the identification, delineating, and monitoring of change in the mining landscape in spatial and temporal scale. The aim of this work was to evaluate the quantitative change in the mining landscape using multi-temporal Landsat datasets of 2004 and 2024. The study showed that mining areas have increased rapidly during the study period, and the growth has occurred by depleting the agricultural and forest land. In 2004 agriculture land covered 36.41% of the study area, but by 2024, it had decrease to 19.68%. Further, the study assessed the dynamics of mining patches and their characteristics through spatial metrics analysis. %. It has been observed that number of patches (NP) and patch density (PD)has increase whereas the largest patch index (LPI) has decreased. Dense and open forest has also been decreased in this period. The rapid expansion of mining areas over the past decade has raised serious ecological concerns.