Establishing a Clean-quality Indicator System for Evaluating Reclaimed Land in the Antaibao Opencast Mine Area, China

This article discusses the existing problems associated with reclaimed land in the area of the Antaibao Opencast Coal Mine, which is located in the semi-arid region of northwest China. The following eight indicators of the suitability of the reclaimed land were developed based on the theory of soil genesis and landscape ecology: the thickness of the effective soil layer, composition of the soil surface, vegetation index, types of covering vegetation, slope of the terrain, time of reclamation, area of the evaluation unit, and the shape index of the evaluation unit. The suitability evaluation indexes of the reclaimed land were determined using the 3S technology and fuzzy evaluation methods, which revealed that the suitability of the reclaimed land in the study area could be divided into six grades and two categories, land suitable for farming, and land suitable for trees or grass. The suitability evaluation indicators and evaluation methods developed to evaluate reclaimed land in this study will be beneficial to the large-scale rapid monitoring and the effective management of reclaimed land in the opencast mine area.