Application of ecological vulnerability evaluation into environmental impact assessment of Fuxin mining area development master plan

As a super country in coal resources exploitation and utilization, China encounters ecological environment problems resulting from large-scale coal mining coupled with rapid economic development that have become increasingly serious such that they directly threaten regional ecological security and people's normal production and livelihood in some areas. How to formulate and implement an eco-friendly development plan is the key to realize sustainable exploitation and utilization of coal resources. In this paper, in order to evaluate ecological suitability of the development layout of Fuxin mining area in Liaoning province, an indicator system was setup for ecological vulnerability evaluation based on the ecological environment status index, ecological sensitivity index and landscape spatial structure index, which was then employed to calculate and grade the eco-vulnerability of the planned mining area. Meanwhile, with the support of GIS, the research area was plotted into five types of zone, i.e., appropriate exploitation zone, optimized exploitation zone, moderate exploitation zone, restrictive exploitation zone and forbidden exploitation zone, whereby optimizing the layout of mining area and guiding the ecological protection and construction during coal exploitation..