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Journal of Arid Land  2017, Vol. 9 Issue (5): 712-726    DOI: 10.1007/s40333-017-0065-8
Orginal Article     
Investigating spatial and temporal variations of soil moisture content in an arid mining area using an improved thermal inertia model
Yuchen WANG, Zhengfu BIAN*(), Shaogang LEI, Yu ZHANG
School of Environment Science and Spatial Informatics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
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Abstract  

Mining operations can usually lead to environmental deteriorations. Underground mining activities could cause an extensive decrease in groundwater level and thus a dramatic variation in soil moisture content (SMC). In this study, the spatial and temporal variations of SMC from 2001 to 2015 at two spatial scales (i.e., the Shendong coal mining area and the Daliuta Coal Mine) were analyzed using an improved thermal inertia model with a long-term series of Landsat TM/OLI (TM=Thematic Mapper and OLI=Operational Land Imager) data. Our results show that at large spatial scale (the Shendong coal mining area), underground mining activities had insignificant negative impacts on SMC and that at small spatial scale (the Daliuta Coal Mine), underground mining activities had significant negative impacts on SMC. Trend analysis of SMC demonstrated that areas with decreasing trend of SMC were mainly distributed in the mined area, indicating that underground mining is a primary cause for the drying trend in the mining region in this arid environment.



Key wordsmining disturbance      spatial-temporal variation      soil moisture content      thermal inertia      Shendong coal mining area     
Received: 22 September 2016      Published: 22 August 2017
Corresponding Authors:
Cite this article:

Yuchen WANG, Zhengfu BIAN, Shaogang LEI, Yu ZHANG. Investigating spatial and temporal variations of soil moisture content in an arid mining area using an improved thermal inertia model. Journal of Arid Land, 2017, 9(5): 712-726.

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http://jal.xjegi.com/10.1007/s40333-017-0065-8     OR     http://jal.xjegi.com/Y2017/V9/I5/712

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