Analysis of spatiotemporal changes and driving forces of ecological environment quality in Northwest China mining area

Northwest China mining area is an important coal production base and ecologically fragile area in China, and it is of great significance to explore the ecological environment quality and influencing factors in the mining area. Focusing on the Northwest China mining area as the study object, an ecological environment quality change evaluation model based on remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) was constructed to comprehensively and intuitively analyze the RSEI change process and influencing factors in the Northwest China mining area. The results indicate: (1) From 2000 to 2021, the ecological environment quality in the Northwest China mining area showed an overall trend of initial increase followed by fluctuations. (2) The evolution of ecological environment quality in the study area was mainly influenced by human factors, affected by the implementation of ecological engineering from 2000 to 2005, and by mining area development from 2005 to 2021. (3) Mining area development has a negative impact on the ecological environment quality of the study area, but subsequent ecological restoration can mitigate the destructive effects of mining development on the ecology. (4) The explanatory power of NDSI (normalized differential soil index) for ecological environment quality is 0.826, and its influence is the most significant. The explanatory powers of WET and NDVI are 0.690 and 0.709 respectively, which play a key role in improving the quality of the ecological environment. It is recommended to implement effective measures, such as afforestation and grass planting for ecological restoration, removal of impervious surface facilities, and controlling the expansion and development speed of built-up areas. These measures can effectively improve the overall ecological environment quality of the study area by enhancing NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) and WI (wetness index) and reducing NDSI.