Mining geoenvironmental impact assessment of Heshan City

Heshan City is a resourceexhausted cities, which has been developed from coal mine industry and has been undergoing a largescale development of economic transformation and urban construction. The mining geoenvironmental (denoted as G-E) impact assessment is an essential study to control urban socioeconomic sustainable development. The assessment consists of two levels of contents, with first one being the assessment of the impact of mining activities on geo-environment and the second one being the assessment of the impact of urban construction on geo-environment. Firstly, assessment factors system were developed based on three geo-environmental elements (i.e. mining geo-environmental conditions, mining status and mining geo-environmental problems) and nine impact factors including landform, vegetation cover, engineering petrofabric, mine density, coal tilt angle, the ratio of mining depth and the thick of coal seam, the extent of the land resources damage, the extent of water resources damage and the strength of geological hazards. Then, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model is utilized for assessing the mining geoenvironmental impact in the first level and the comprehensive index assessment model is employed for the second level assessment. Based on the assessment results the Hehan City was separated into severely affected area with 62.87 km2, less severely affected areas with 118.84 km2 and not severely affected areas with 175.99 km2, accounting for 17.6%, 33.2% and 79.2%, respectively, of the total area of the City. The conclusion obtained from this study can be used as an important basis for the comprehensive management of mining geo-environmental and integrated renovation in Heshan City.