Detecting surface coal mining areas

from remote sensing imagery: an

approach based on object-oriented
decision trees

Xiaoji Zeng
Zhifeng Liu
Chunyang He
Qun Ma
Jianguo Wu

Xiaoji Zeng, Zhifeng Liu, Chunyang He, Qun Ma, Jianguo Wu, “Detecting surface coal mining areas
from remote sensing imagery: an approach based on object-oriented decision trees,” J. Appl.
Remote Sens. 11(1), 015025 (2017), doi: 10.1117/1.JRS.11.015025.
 Detecting surface coal mining areas from
remote sensing imagery: an approach based on
object-oriented decision trees

Xiaoji Zeng,a,b,† Zhifeng Liu,a,c,† Chunyang He,a,c,* Qun Ma,a,b and

Jianguo Wua,d
a
Beijing Normal University, Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS),
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE),
Beijing, China
b
Beijing Normal University, Institute of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management,
Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing, China
c
Beijing Normal University, School of Natural Resources,
Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing, China
d
Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences and School of Sustainability,
Tempe, Arizona, United States

Abstract. Detecting surface coal mining areas (SCMAs) using remote sensing data in a timely
and an accurate manner is necessary for coal industry management and environmental assess-
ment. We developed an approach to effectively extract SCMAs from remote sensing imagery
based on object-oriented decision trees (OODT). This OODT approach involves three main
steps: object-oriented segmentation, calculation of spectral characteristics, and extraction of
SCMAs. The advantage of this approach lies in its effective integration of the spectral and spatial
characteristics of SCMAs so as to distinguish the mining areas (i.e., the extracting areas, stripped
areas, and dumping areas) from other areas that exhibit similar spectral features (e.g., bare soils
and built-up areas). We implemented this method to extract SCMAs in the eastern part of Ordos
City in Inner Mongolia, China. Our results had an overall accuracy of 97.07% and a kappa
coefficient of 0.80. As compared with three other spectral information-based methods, our
OODT approach is more accurate in quantifying the amount and spatial pattern of SCMAs
in dryland regions. © 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) [DOI: 10
.1117/1.JRS.11.015025]
Keywords: surface coal mining area; object-oriented decision trees; remote sensing; Inner
Mongolia; Ordos.
Paper 16952 received Dec. 14, 2016; accepted for publication Mar. 13, 2017; published online
Mar. 23, 2017.

1 Introduction
Surface coal mining areas (SCMAs) refer to places where coal reserves are exploited using
opencast mining techniques, including the surrounding areas associated with mining activities.1
Specifically, SCMAs are composed of extracting areas (EAs), stripped areas (SAs), and dumping
areas (DAs).1 With increasing global coal production, the world has experienced dramatic
growth in SCMAs during the past century.1 Currently, SCMAs account for ∼40% of global
coal production.1
However, SCMAs worldwide are facing serious environmental challenges.1–4 For example,
SCMAs eradicate and damage native vegetation, resulting in loss of natural habitat and declines
in biodiversity.5,6 In some areas, dust and sulfide in the air, as well as heavy metals and toxic

*Address all correspondence to: Chunyang He, E-mail: hcy@bnu.edu.cn

†
Co-first author of this work.

1931-3195/2017/$25.00 © 2017 SPIE

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 Zeng et al.: Detecting surface coal mining areas from remote sensing imagery. . .

substances in the water and soil, have significantly exceeded guidelines, leading to serious air,
water, and soil pollution in regions with SCMAs.2,3 In addition, opencast mining activities
destroy soil and geological structures, and have frequently caused serious soil erosion
and geological disasters, such as subsidence, landslides, and debris flows in these areas.1,3
Thus, timely and accurate detection of SCMAs are crucial for coal industry management and
environmental assessment.1,3,4
Since Chase and Pettyjohn7 used Landsat data to map SCMAs in Coshocton, Ohio, United
States, in 1972, remote sensing techniques have been widely used to detect SCMAs because of
their synoptic views and repeated imaging of large geographic areas.8–13 For example, Russell
et al.8 extracted SCMAs in southwestern Indiana, United States, using Landsat data. Mamula10
used aerial photographs and Landsat imagery to monitor SCMAs in northern Great Plains,
United States. Parks and Petersen14 quantified the spatial patterns of SCMAs in 1983 in central
Pennsylvania, United States. Fernandez-Manso et al.15 used remote sensing images to detect
SCMAs in United States, Australia, and Spain. Qian et al.16 extracted information about
the dynamics of SCMAs from 1978 to 2011 in Holingol City, China. LaJeunesse Connette17
analyzed the dynamics of SCMAs from 2002 to 2015 in Myanmar using Landsat data and
freely-available fine-resolution images of Google Earth.
At present, four remote sensing-based approaches are commonly used to detect SCMAs.
These include visual interpretation, supervised classification, decision trees, and object-oriented
classification. For instance, using visual interpretation, Prakash and Gupta5 extracted SCMAs
from 1975 to 1994 in the Jharia coalfield area of India. Based on supervised classification,
Demirel et al.18,19 obtained information on SCMAs in the Göynük region, Turkey, from
2004 to 2008. Decision trees were used in Zhai et al.,20 who identified SCMAs from 1979
to 2010 in Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia, China. Using object-oriented classification, Hou
and Hu21 extracted SCMAs in Jiaozuo city in Henan Province, China. However, visual
interpretation requires large amounts of human time and resources, thus not appropriate for
timely detection of SCMAs over broad spatial scales. The supervised classification methods,
decision trees, and object-oriented classification are all spectral information-based approaches,
which often result in relatively large errors when extracting SCMAs because SAs, DAs, barren
land, and built-up areas have similar spectral characteristics.18,19,22 To improve the accuracy of
detecting SCMAs with remote sensing data, new approaches are needed.
Object-oriented decision trees (OODT), which combine object-oriented techniques and
decision trees, provide a new way to extract SCMAs23 in a timely and more accurate manner.
The OODT uses segmented objects as the basic classification units, taking advantage of a variety
of information on spectra, shape, texture, and context that can improve the classification
accuracy.24 The OODT has already been successfully used to detect built-up areas, grasslands,
shrublands, forests, and water.23,24 For example, Laliberte et al.23 extracted the rangelands in the
Jornada del Muerto Basin. Qi et al.25 extracted the built-up area, barren land, vegetation, and
water in Guangzhou, China. However, the OODT has not been used to extract SCMAs.23–25
In this paper, we introduce a new OODT approach for extracting SCMAs. We first describe
the basic idea and the procedures involved in the new OODT approach. Then, we demonstrate
the new OODT approach through the detection of SCMAs in the eastern part of Ordos city,
a dryland region in Inner Mongolia, China, using Landsat-8 operational land imager (OLI) data.
Next, we assess the accuracy of our new approach against visually interpreted results of SCMAs
from high-resolution imagery and against three other remote sensing classification methods.
Finally, we discuss the advantages and limitations of the new OODT approach.

2 Materials and Methods

2.1 Study Area and Data

Our study area is located in the eastern part of Ordos city (109°31′ to 110°36′E, 39°02′N to
39°43′N) in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China (Fig. 1). The total area of the study
site is 7000 km2 . Under a temperate continental climate,26 the study area has several land use and
land cover types, including grassland, barren land, built-up area, and water, and contains sub-
stantial coal reserves and a large number of SCMAs (Fig. 1).4 SCMAs typically consist of three

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 Zeng et al.: Detecting surface coal mining areas from remote sensing imagery. . .

Fig. 1 The study area, located in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China.

parts: the EA, the SA, and the DA (Fig. 2). In this study, we lumped SA and DA together
(denoted as SA/DA) because these two parts were spectrally indistinguishable in many cases.
A Landsat-8 OLI multispectral image obtained from the United States Geological Survey
(USGS)’s website (Ref. 27) was used to extract the SCMAs. The Landsat-8 OLI image was
acquired on July 30, 2014, with a path and row of 127 and 33, respectively, and a spatial res-
olution of 30 m. This image contained spectral information from eight bands ranging from the
blue visible channel to the infrared channel.28 In addition, a Gaofen-1 image obtained from
the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Remote Sensing Cloud Platform (Ref. 29) was used to assess

Fig. 2 Illustration of the spatial structure of SCMAs, consisting of the EAs, SAs, and DAs. (a) An
example of a SCMA in the Gaofen-1 image (R: Band 1, G: Band 2, and B: Band 3). (b) An example
of a SCMA in the Landsat-8 OLI image (R: Band 6, G: Band 5, and B: Band 4).

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Fig. 3 Flow chart of our method, showing the major steps of implementation of our OODT
approach.

the accuracy of our results. The Gaofen-1 image was acquired on June 12, 2014, with a spatial
resolution of 2 m. The Gaofen-1 image has one panchromatic band (0.45 to 0.90 μm) and four
multispectral bands (0.45 to 0.52 μm, 0.52 to 0.59 μm, 0.63 to 0.69 μm, and 0.77 to 0.89 μm).30

2.2 Methods
Our OODT approach involves three main steps: object-oriented segmentation, calculation of
spectral characteristics, and extraction of SCMAs (Fig. 3). This approach is not entirely new,
but rather, it is based on other existing methods, such as supervised classification, decision trees,
and object-oriented classification and tailored particularly for detecting surface mining areas in
dryland regions.

2.2.1 Object-oriented segmentation

Following Baatz and Schape,31 we used an object-oriented multiscale image analysis method to
segment the 2014 Landsat-8 OLI image of the study area and obtained the segmented objects as
the basic units for classification (Fig. 3). This segmentation method is a bottom-up pixel-merging
technique, in which pixels are merged into objects according to several input parameters that
control the heterogeneity of the spectrum, texture, and shape between adjacent objects. The main
segmentation parameters included the scale parameter and the weights of four factors: color,

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shape, smoothness, and compactness. In accordance with the methods suggested by Laliberte
et al.,23 we used the Landsat-8 OLI image as the input data and used visual interpretation to
determine the optimal segmentation parameters. These parameters were selected based on
the values at which most pixels in an EA can be merged into an object. Specifically, the
scale parameter was set to 200, and the weights of color, shape, smoothness, and compactness
were set to 0.9, 0.1, 0.5, and 0.5, respectively. Using these parameters, we segmented the
Landsat-8 OLI image and merged the pixels into objects.

2.2.2 Calculation of spectral characteristics

We calculated three indices that can capture the spectral characteristics of SCMAs for all
segmented objects, following methods used by Tucker,32 Bouziani et al.,33 Zhai et al.,20 and
Mao et al.22 These indices included the normalized difference coal index (NDCI), the normalized
difference vegetation index (NDVI), and the built-up area index (BAI). These three spectral
indices were calculated using the following equations:

NDCI ¼ ðB6 − B5Þ∕ðB6 þ B5Þ;

EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e001;116;555 (1)

NDVI ¼ ðB5 − B4Þ∕ðB5 þ B4Þ;

EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e002;116;517 (2)

BAI ¼ ðB2 − B5Þ∕ðB2 þ B5Þ;

EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e003;116;487 (3)

where B2, B4, B5, and B6 denote band 2, band 4, band 5, and band 6 in the Landsat-8 OLI
image, respectively.

2.2.3 Extraction of surface coal mining areas

The process for extracting SCMAs consists of three basic steps (Fig. 3). First, EAs and potential
SAs or DAs were identified on the basis of the spectral characteristics of each object. Second,
real SAs or DAs were identified by taking into account the expected spatially adjacent relation-
ships among EAs, SAs, and DAs (Fig. 2). Finally, the total SCMAs were obtained by merging
EAs, SAs, and DAs.
In the first step, following the methods suggested by Zhai et al.20 and Mao et al.,22 we iden-
tified EAs based on their spectral characteristics. The data processing can be summarized using
the following logical function:


NDCIi > T NDCI and BAIi > T BAI
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e004;116;301

1
EAi ¼ ; (4)
0 Otherwise

where EAi is the class value for the i’th object, with the value of 1 indicating an EA and 0 is
non-EA object; NDCIi and BAIi are the NDCI and BAI class values for the i’th object; and
T NDCI and T BAI are the optimal thresholds of NDCI and BAI for identifying EAs, respectively.
Then, we identified potential SAs or DAs from the non-EA objects using the following
logical function:


NDCIi > T NDCI and BAIi < T BAI and NDCIi < T NDCI
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e005;116;188

1
PSDi ¼ ; (5)
0 Otherwise

where PSDi is the class value for the i’th object, with the value of 1 indicating a potential SA/DA
and 0 is a non-SCMA object; NDVIi is the value of the NDVI for the i’th object; and T NDVI is
the optimal threshold of NDVI for identifying a potential SA/DA.
Following Chen et al.34 and Liu et al.,35 we determined the optimal thresholds of the NDCI,
NDVI, and BAI by selecting those values that yielded results that best matched a selected set of
reference samples. Specifically, we visually selected a total of 700 samples: 100 samples for each

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land use/cover type (i.e., EA, SA/DA, grassland, barren land, built-up area, river, and lake) from
the 17,797 segmented objects in the Landsat-8 OLI image. Through a trial and error experiment
using these samples, we determined the optimal thresholds for NDCI, NDVI, and BAI to be
−0.01, 0.13, and −0.05, respectively. In other words, these values of optimal thresholds,
when used in Eqs. (4) and (5), produced the most accurate classification of EAs, SAs/DAs,
and barren lands.
Theoretically, a greater number of samples should lead to a greater accuracy of the threshold
values, but too large number of samples would be too laborious, reducing the efficiency of
the method. The adequacy of sample size can be determined by the accuracy of classification
results using these threshold values. In our study, the sufficiently high accuracy of classification
results confirmed that our a priori choice of 700 samples was reasonable.
In the second step, we differentiated the real SAs/DAs from the potential SAs/DAs based on
the expected spatial adjacency relationship among EAs, SAs, and DAs as empirically observed
(Fig. 2). Specifically, all the objects surrounding EAs were considered potential SAs/DAs and
examined one by one to identify their neighboring objects. If a potential SA/DA adjoined one or
more EAs, then it was determined as a real SA/DA. These operations were performed iteratively
using the following logical equations:
8 P neighbor
<1
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e006;116;532

EAi;j >0
RSDi;t ¼ j ; ðt ¼ 0Þ ; (6)
:
0 Otherwise

8 P
< 1 RSDi;t−1 ¼ 1 RSDneighbor
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e007;116;469

i;j;t−1 > 0
RSDi;t ¼ j ; ðt ¼ 1;2; : : : ; nÞ; (7)
:
0 Otherwise

where RSDi;t is the class value for the i’th object at the t’th iteration (1 ¼ real SA∕DA and
0 ¼ non-SA∕DA); EAneighbori;j is the class value for the j’th object that adjoins the i’th object,
i.e., sharing a boundary or a node of the i’th object (1 ¼ EA and 0 ¼ non-EA); and RSDii;t−1 and
RSDneighbor
i;j;t−1 are the same terms at the (t − 1)’th iteration.
After all the SAs/DAs were classified, they were merged with the EAs identified earlier to
map out the SCMAs across the entire study area in 2014.

3 Results

3.1 Accuracy Assessment

We assessed the accuracy of SCMAs extracted from the Landsat-8 OLI image (30 m resolution)
against our visually interpreted results from the Gaofen-1 image (2 m resolution), as in
Fernandez-Manso et al.15 and Qian et al.16 First, we extracted the SCMAs from the
Gaofen-1 image by visual interpretation and regarded these as the ground truth (Fig. 4).
Then, we compared the SCMAs extracted with the OODT method directly with the visually
interpreted SCMAs from the Gaofen-1 image (Fig. 4, Tables 1–3).
The overall accuracy was 97.07%, a producer’s accuracy was 80.64%, a user’s accuracy
was 82.11%, kappa coefficient was 0.80, quantity disagreement was 0.14%, and allocation
disagreement was 2.79% (Fig. 4, Tables 1 and 3). For EAs only, the overall accuracy was
98.77%, kappa coefficient was 0.76, quantity disagreement was 0.14%, and allocation disagree-
ment was 1.09% (Table 2). These numbers are indicative of high accuracy for remote sensing-
based mapping of coal mining areas.15,16

3.2 Spatial Patterns of Surface Coal Mining Areas

There were 277 SCMAs with a total area of 180.53 km2 , accounting for 2.61% of the total land
area within the study area in 2014 [Fig. 5(a)]. Among these SCMAs, two were larger than

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Fig. 4 Schematic representation of accuracy assessment. (a) The original Gaofen-1 image of the
study area with a spatial resolution of 2 meters; (b) visually identified SCMAs from the Gaofen-1
image; (c) SCMAs classified by the proposed OODT method; and (d) areas of agreement and
disagreement between the results from the two methods.

Table 1 Confusion matrix for accuracy assessment of SCMAs.

Reference (km2 )

SCMA Non-SCMA Row total (km2 )

Result (km2 ) SCMA 27.83 6.06 33.89

Non-SCMA 6.68 394.33 401.01

Column total (km2 ) 34.51 400.39 434.90

Kappa: 0.80; overall accuracy: 97.07%

Quantity disagreement: 0.14%; allocation disagreement: 2.79%

Note: Quantity disagreement is defined as “the amount of difference between the reference map and a com-
parison map that is due to the less than perfect match in the proportions of the categories.”36
Allocation disagreement is defined as “the amount of difference between the reference map and a comparison
map that is due to the less than optimal match in the spatial allocation of the categories, given the proportions of
the categories in the reference and comparison maps.”36

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Table 2 Confusion matrix for accuracy assessment of EAs.

Reference (km2 )

SCMA Non-SCMA Row total (km2 )

Result (km2 ) SCMA 8.60 2.38 10.98

Non-SCMA 2.99 420.94 423.93

Column total (km2 ) 11.59 423.32 434.91

Kappa: 0.76; overall accuracy: 98.77%

Quantity disagreement: 0.14%; allocation disagreement: 1.09%

Table 3 Accuracy assessment.

Overall Producer’s User’s Quantity Allocation

accuracy accuracy accuracy Kappa disagreement disagreement
Methods (%) (%) (%) coefficient (%) (%)

OODT 97.07 80.64 82.11 0.80 0.14 2.79

Supervised classification 96.25 81.91 73.75 0.76 0.88 2.87

Object-oriented classification 91.28 24.79 41.70 0.27 3.22 5.50

Decision tree 93.92 39.79 70.82 0.48 3.48 2.60

Fig. 5 The distribution of SCMAs in the study area. (a) The spatial distribution of SCMAs; (b) the
size distribution of SCMAs; (c) the size distribution of EAs; and (d) the size distribution of combined
SAs/DAs.

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Fig. 6 Comparison of the spatial extent and distribution of SCMAs extracted using different
methods.

10 km2 , accounting for 14.76% of the total area of SCMAs [Fig. 5(b)]. The largest SCMA had
an area of 16.57 km2 , accounting for 9.18% of the total area of SCMAs. Forty-six SCMAs had
an area between 1 and 10 km2 . These SCMAs had a total area of 111.09 km2 , accounting for
61.54% of the total area of SCMAs. In addition, nearly a half of the SCMAs (135) were smaller
than 0.1 km2 [Fig. 5(b)]. The smallest SCMA had an area of only 0.01 km2.
The total area of EAs was 55.06 km2 , accounting for 30.50% of the total SCMAs. Ten
SCMAs had EAs larger than 1 km2 , totaling 19.49 km2 and accounting for 35.40% of the
total area of EAs [Fig. 5(c)]. The largest EA was 3.81 km2 in area (6.92% of the total area

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of EAs). In addition, 178 of the SCMAs (64.26%) had EAs smaller than 0.1 km2 , with the
smallest EA being 0.004 km2 [Fig. 5(c)].
The SAs and DAs together accounted for 125.47 km2 or 69.50% of the total area of SCMAs.
Only one SCMA had SAs/DAs larger than 10 km2 [Fig. 5(d)], with an area of 12.78 km2 (or
10.18% of the total area of combined SAs and Das). Twenty-nine SCMAs had SAs/DAs between
1 and 10 km2 . These SAs/DAs had a total area of 75.28 km2 , accounting for 60.00% of the
total area of combined SAs and DAs. In addition, 118 (42.60% of the SCMAs) had SAs/DAs
smaller than 0.1 km2 [Fig. 5(d)].

3.3 Comparison of the Object-Oriented Decision Trees Approach with

Other Methods
To further evaluate the strengths of our OODT approach, we followed the three spectral
information-based methods used by Demirel et al.,18 Zhai et al.,20 and Hou and Hu,21 to extract
SCMAs from the Landsat-8 OLI image in our study area in 2014 (Fig. 6, Tables 3 and 4).
These methods include supervised classification, decision trees, and object-oriented classifica-
tion (Fig. 6, Tables 3 and 4).
We found that these three methods had a lower accuracy than our OODT approach, with
kappa coefficients below 0.77, producer’s accuracies below 82%, and user’s accuracies
below 74% (Table 3). In particular, the SCMAs extracted using object-oriented classification
had a kappa coefficient of only 0.27, a producer’s accuracy of 24.79%, and a user’s accuracy
of 41.70% (Table 3). For the biggest SCMA, object-oriented classification had the lowest kappa
coefficient of 0.48 and the lowest overall accuracy of 77.29% (Fig. 7). For the smallest SCMA,
the supervised classification had the lowest kappa coefficient of 0 and the lowest overall accu-
racy of 37.86% (Fig. 7). These more traditional classification methods make obvious commis-
sion and omission errors when identifying SCMAs because they were not able to effectively
distinguish between SAs, DAs, barren land, and built-up areas that had similar spectral, textural,
and shape characteristics (Figs. 6 and 7).

Table 4 Technical details of supervised classification, object-oriented classification, and decision

tree.

Name Procedures Reference

Supervised 1. Selection of samples for each land use/cover type 18

classification (i.e., EA, SA/DA, grassland, barren land, built-up area, river, and lake).

2. The maximum likelihood classification.

3. Combination of EA and SA/DA.

Decision tree 1. Selection of samples for SCMAs and non-SCMAs. 20

2. Selection of optimal thresholds for red, green, and blue bands.

3. Build the decision tree based on red, green, and blue bands.

4. Extraction of SCMAs based on the decision tree

(i.e., Bandred < Thresholdred and Bandgreen < Thresholdgreen
and Bandblue < Thresholdblue ).

Object-oriented 1. Object-oriented segmentation. 21

classification
2. Calculation of brightness based on the spectral information.

3. Selection of samples for SCMAs and non-SCMAs.

4. Selection of optimal thresholds for brightness.

5. Extraction of SCMAs based on the brightness

(i.e., Brightness < ThresholdBrightness ).

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Fig. 7 Accuracy assessment of the largest and smallest SCMAs using different methods.

4 Discussion and Conclusions

The proposed OODT approach has two major advantages. First, because most of the operations
can be automated, this approach is much faster than manual or visual interpretation, which can be
laborious and inconsistent. For extracting SCMAs over broad areas, this is an important advan-
tage. Second, the OODT approach is quite accurate for identifying SCMAs, at least in dryland
regions, producing better results than supervised classification, decision trees, and object-
oriented classification (Figs. 6 and 7, Table 3). The OODT approach had an overall accuracy
of 97.07% and an average kappa coefficient of 0.80, with the producer’s accuracy and user’s
accuracy both greater than 80% (Table 3).
The improvement in classification accuracy is attributed to the combination of spectral infor-
mation and spatial location information in the OODT approach. This combination enables the
approach to more effectively distinguish SAs/DAs from barren lands and built-up areas that are
not adjacent to EAs, thus reducing commission and omission errors. Thus, the proposed
approach provides a new and better way to extract SCMAs from remote sensing imagery accu-
rately and in a timely manner.
There are some limitations to the proposed OODT approach. For example, SAs and DAs that
are not connected to EAs cannot be identified by the proposed approach. Fortunately, in our study
area, such cases were extremely rare. Also, the method cannot effectively distinguish SAs and DAs
because of their highly similar spectral characteristics. In many cases of estimating surface mining
areas and assessing their environmental impacts, combining SAs and DAs may suffice. In addition,
the optimal thresholds of NDVI, NDCI, and BAI may change with seasonality, study areas, and
remote sensing data sources. However, the sample-based method for selecting thresholds,34,35 as
illustrated in the OODT approach here, should enable one to readily obtain the optimal thresholds
accordingly, which makes the OODT approach highly flexible and widely applicable.
Several studies have shown that texture and shape information can be used to further improve
the accuracy of object-oriented classification.9,18 Thus, we plan to improve our method by incor-
porating information on spectra, spatial location, texture, and shape to further increase its
detecting ability and accuracy of mapping SCMAs. In the same time, we also plan to quantify
the long-term dynamics of SCMAs and assess the environmental effects of surface coal mining
in the study area.4

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
This work was supported in part by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant

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 Zeng et al.: Detecting surface coal mining areas from remote sensing imagery. . .

Nos. 2014CB954303 and 2014CB954302) and the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant Nos. 41621061 and 41501195).

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Xiaoji Zeng is a PhD candidate at Beijing Normal University, China. He received his MS degree
in geography from Xinjiang University in 2011. His research interests include detection of
surface coal mining areas and assessment of their environmental impacts.

Biographies for the other authors are not available.

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 015025-13 Jan–Mar 2017 • Vol. 11(1)