Remote sensing of vegetation health for reclaimed areas of Seyitömer open cast coal mine

A remote sensing based vegetation cover monitoring and health assessment is presented and applied to a case study of the Seyitömer Lignite Enterprise (SLE) in Kütahya, Turkey. In this study, multi-temporal Landsat TM data sets were used to assist in identifying and monitoring the progress in the rehabilitation field. Evaluation was based on analyzing varying vegetation indices. In order to monitor and track the changes, which occurred from 1987 to 2006 in vegetation condition, Simple Ratio (SR) index, Reduced Simple Ratio (RSR), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Tasseled Cap Transformation analysis were employed in the study. The vegetation indices were mapped and evaluated. The result of these analyses showed that, the region has moderate to good reclamation success. As a result, it can be concluded that, the remotely sensed data are undoubtedly useful to provide up-to-date and quick data and are cost-effective in monitoring the progress of rehabilitation for large extended regions.

Research Highlights
► Condition of vegetation cover and progress of rehabilitation in the reclaimed area was evaluated.
► Evaluation was based on analyzing varying vegetation indices for Landsat images.
► Good agreement between vegetation indices concerning the condition of vegetation was shown.
► The region has moderate to good reclamation success.