Monitoring the mining effect at drainage basin level using geoinformation technologies

One of the priority lines of modern regional policy with regard to mining is a territory’s sustainable use. One of the key issues is the development of local level monitoring systems to assess and control territories that are subject to intensive anthropogenic activity. The current work proposes a developed geodatabase model for remote sensing and ground-based monitoring of the effects of coal mining at drainage level using geoinformation technologies. Based on this model, the Kutina geographic information system for the drainage basin of the Kutina River has been constructed. The geodatabase is open and may be updated and supplemented with other types of information. This is the first monitoring of coal mining’s anthropogenic impact on the land cover and the Kutina Pyramids natural landmark carried out on the territory of the Kutina River drainage basin, Bulgaria. It may assist local level managerial decision-making, among others. Generation of landslide processes and self-ignition of coal layers has been identified as well. The recorded change in the hydrographic network resulting from the performed open coal extraction affects directly the change of the erosion basis. Its increase enhances lateral erosion at the expense of vertical, which is one of the major causes for the Kutina Pyramids natural landmark’s degradation.     

Collaborative validation of GlobeLand30:Methodology and practices

30-m Global Land Cover(GLC)data products permit the detection of land cover changes at the scale of most human land activities,and are therefore used as fundamental information for sustainable development,environmental change studies,and many other societal benefit areas.In the past few years,increasing efforts have been devoted to the accuracy assessment of GlobeLand30 and other finer-resolution GLC data products.However,most of them were conducted either within a limited percentage of map sheets selected from a global scale or in some individual countries(areas),and there are still many areas where the uncertainty of 30-m resolution GLC data products remains to be validated and documented.In order to promote a comprehensive and collaborative validation of 30-m GLC data products,the GEO Global Land Cover Community Activity had organized a project from 2015 to 2017,to examine and explore its major problems,including the lack of international agreed validation guidelines and on-line tools for facilitating collaborative validation activities.With the joint effort of experts and users from 30 GEO member countries or participating organizations,a technical specification for 30-m GLC validation was developed based on the findings and experiences.An on-line validation tool,GLCVal,was developed by integrating land cover validation procedures with the service computing technologies.About 20 countries(regions)have completed the accuracy assess-ment of GlobeLand30 for their territories with the guidance of the technical specification and the support of GLCVal.