This study seeks to address the problems of major geo-environmental hazards caused by high-intensive coal mining in China’s western eco-environment frangible area including strong mining pressure, surface subsidence, soil and water loss, and land desertification. Using the high-intensive mining at the Xiao-jihan Coal Mine, this paper investigates the compaction characteristics of aeolian sand-b...

Nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide gases together with dust are known as the major pollutants arising during the blasting operations using the ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (ANFO) explosive at the Sungun surface mine, located in the northwest of Iran. The pollutants were monitored during some blasting operations at the mine. It was concluded that the gases and dust clouds initially went up to the ...

Implementation of clean mining technology at coal mines is crucial to protect the environment and maintain balance among energy resources, consumption, and ecology. After reviewing present coal clean mining technology, we introduce the technology principles and technological process of paste backfill mining in coal mines and discuss the components and features of backfill materials, the constit...

[1] Surface mining of coal and subsequent reclamation represent the dominant land use change in the central Appalachian Plateau (CAP) region of the United States. Hydrologic impacts of surface mining have been studied at the plot scale, but effects at broader scales have not been explored adequately. Broad-scale classification of reclaimed sites is difficult because standing vegetation makes th...

The Appalachian region of USA hosts diverse forests and abundant high-quality coal reserves. Surface mining methods are often used for coal extraction. Because common reclamation methods in past years have not restored forest vegetation, surface mining has created a diverse land base. Although some mined lands have been placed into managed uses, most have not. Little is known about the extent a...

One of the challenging problems for surface mining operation optimization is choosing the optimal truck and loader fleet. This problem is the Equipment Selection Problem (ESP). In this paper, we describe the ESP in the context of surface mining. We discuss related problems and applications. Within the scope of both the ESP and related problems, we outline modeling and solution approaches. Using...

Human activities for extracting natural resources, may lead to subsequent gradual or abrupt surface deformation, with adverse effects in the local ecosystem and damage to man-made structures. Over the past two decades, interferometric SAR (InSAR) has been demonstrated as the optimal remote sensing technique to estimate surface deformation with high spatial coverage and vertical accuracy over tr...

Past efforts to estimate methane emissions from underground mines, surface mines, and other coal mine operations have been hampered, to different degrees, by a lack of direct emissions data. Direct measurements have been completely unavailable for several important coal mining operations. A primary goal of this study was to collect new methane emissions measurements and other data for the most ...