Spatial distribution of mine areas in the Luanhe River Basin, China: Clustering implications

The Luanhe River Basin is the most mined region in China, and spatial analysis of mine areas is beneficial for identifying hotspots of mining-related threats and assessing their impacts in this catchment. From an Earth system science perspective, we examined the spatial clustering of mine areas and the interactions between geographical attributes in the Luanhe River Basin. The findings are: (1) the total mine areas in the Luanhe River Basin are approximately 368.5 km² (2749 polygons), primarily located in the middle and lower reaches. (2) The Global Moran's I for scale and mining land of mine areas in the Luanhe River Basin is 0.04 and 0.45, respectively. This indicates that the scale of mine areas is randomly spread in the basin, while the mining exhibits clustering property. Consequently, clustered mine areas cover approximately 207 km² (56.1 %), while randomly distributed mine areas cover ∼161.5 km² of land (43.9 %). (3) A merged region is formed when the buffer distance of mine areas exceeds 2 km, potentially creating contiguous mining threat areas. This research provides a dataset for managing and governance mine areas in the Luanhe River Basin.