Assessment of open pit coal mining impacts using remote sensing: A case study from Turkey

Abstract

The environmental impacts of coal mining are many and diverse. However, coal is an essential source of energy in meeting the requirements of the existing and growing industries of a country. Damage to the environment is usually seen as an unavoidable consequence of maintaining national development. It is also desirable to optimize and minimize environmental impacts by adopting proper mining techniques. Therefore, it is necessary to have quickly accessible, cost-effective, multi-temporal information regarding the area's environmental status. Remote sensing technology affords a viable means of analyzing the changing conditions at mine sites. In this study, multi-temporal Landsat TM data sets from the Soma coal basin were subjected to a number of digital image processing techniques to assist in identifying and monitoring the environmental impacts. The application of digital image processing proved to be an effective means of analyzing the multitemporal data set.