Land Assessment in Mining Regions Considering Ecology

The analysis of early studies and methods of land degradation assessment demonstrated that the existing assessment procedure does not reflect the real situation. The existing methods do not consider ecological aspects as loss of social-recreational and protective-restoration functions. The existing methods of assessing damage from the mining and processing enterprise require improvement with mandatory consideration of the environmental component. The object of the study is the land in mining and industrial regions, where minerals are extracted underground and industrial masses are formed on the surface. The main types of land use have been systematized, which makes it possible to apply an estimated aggregate approach. The loss of a number of functions of economic turnover is a classification sign of land degradation assessment. The mechanism of land degradation assessment with three environmental criteria is proposed: damage from the loss of social-recreational functions, damage from the loss of protective and restorative functions, damage from the main mining type of activity. The results of approbation of the proposed methodology demonstrated underestimation of the land plot at calculation by traditional methods by 2.1 times.