Abstract:

Exploitation of mines serves as an important guarantee for the national economy and construction of national defense, however， it also brings about great damages to the local ecological environment. With the Bayan Obo mining area cited as object, data acquired through large volumes of field investigations, remote sensing data from Landsat TM, OLI, Quickbird and digital elevation map (DEM) of the region were analyzed with the neighborhood space analysis function of GIS and specific frequency analysis method for exploration of impacts of exploitation of the mine on ecological environment from the angles of land destruction, vegetation degradation and soil erosion. Results show that the situation of land alienation and destruction was very serious, and most of the alienated land used to be grassland; The closer to the mining area, the more serious the land destruction, and the worse the vegetation grew; In 1990-2014, the acreage of soil erosion did not change much, but the soil erosion within the radius of 500 m of the mining site has turned from mild to severe in degree. On the whole, the ecological environment of the Bayan Obo mining area displays a deteriorating trend, and the closer to the mining site the more  serious.

Key words: Bayan Obo, mining area exploitation, ecological degradation