Remote sensing monitoring recent rapid increase of coal mining activity of an important energy base in northern China, a case study of Mu Us Sandy Land

•Mu Us Sandy Land in northern China is an important energy base of northern China.•We monitored the distribution of mining regions using remote sensing.•We developed a database of mining region in the latest 13 years.•Providing basis for mineral resources rational exploitation plan in desert zone. Mu Us Sandy Land (MUSL) in northern China as a typical eco-fragile region contains approximately one-third of the Chinese coal reserves. The region has a long history of coal mining with prolonged human-induced activities that might accompany aeolian desertification development. Since China started implementing the western development policy in 2000, the mining activity has expanded rapidly in the MUSL region and impacted strongly the sustainable socioeconomic development. Up till now, only scattered information on these activities is available from specific studies. In this paper, based on the Landsat TM, ETM, and OLI images from 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2013, we monitor systematically the expansion of coal mining activity using the mining regions as an indicator and the changes of the land cover type due to the expansion of mining activity in the MUSL region. Based on these data, we developed a database of mining region by introducing a mining region classification system and use it to discuss the spatial and temporal evolution trends of mining activity. The obtained results provide evidences for managers to evaluate the execution of government planning and the effect of rapidly expanded mining activity on the local ecological environment.