Ecological footprint: an indicator of environmental sustainability of a surface coal mine

Suranjan Sinha (), Surajit Chakraborty and Shatrajit Goswami
Additional contact information
Suranjan Sinha: Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur
Surajit Chakraborty: Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management
Shatrajit Goswami: Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2017, vol. 19, issue 3, No 3, 807-824

Abstract: Abstract Ecological footprint of mining can be used as an indicator to monitor and regulate mining operations and ensure long-term environmental sustainability. It can be viewed as a mining footprint, which is surrogate of the environmental impacts of mining. In this paper, a methodological framework is developed to demonstrate how ecological footprint can be used as an indicator of environmental degradation. Nine air quality and 26 soil quality samples are collected from the adjoining area of a mechanized coal mine, located in Raniganj coal mining belt of Burdwan district, West Bengal. Geographical information system is used for data interpolation and preparation of air and soil quality maps. The weights of different air and soil quality parameters are calculated by running principal component analysis. These derived weights are used for preparation of final composite air and soil quality maps. The composite maps show the mining footprints, expressed as land equivalent, around the active mine sites. The impact zones reveal the extent of degradation of the soil and air qualities in the areas near a mine. It is found that the impact zones, with respect to air and soil qualities, extend over areas which are 7.7 and 7.8 times the actual mining areas, that is, the area covered under mining operations, respectively. The results show the extent of degradation of air and soil qualities of the area. At different stages of mining, these footprints can be used as indicators to reveal the areas where soil and air qualities are adversely impacted.

Keywords: Ecological footprint; Sustainability indicator; GIS; PCA; Weights; West Bengal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-016-9766-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:19:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10668-016-9766-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-016-9766-y

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().