Abstract:

The Weibei mining area in Shaanxi Province, China is located in the Loess Plateau. Affected by natural environment and human activities such as coal mining, soil erosion in this area is more serious and the ecological environment is more fragile. In this paper, the simulation of soil erosion and its quantitative attribution analysis have been conducted in the mining area based on the RUSLE model and the geographical detector method. The influencing factors, such as vegetation cover, perennial average precipitation, slope, land use type and annual coal output have been taken into consideration. The results of this study provided the advice on the soil and water conservation in mining areas. The results indicate as follows: (1) The intensity of soil erosion in general was mainly slight and mild in Weibei mining area. The soil erosion was severe in the central, southeastern and southwestern regions of the study area. (2) Vegetation coverage and perennial average precipitation are the dominant factors of soil erosion in Weibei mining area.Moreover,the conditions that are likely to induce soil erosion are: slopes between 20° and 25°,vegetation coverage less than 0.3 and bare lands.(3) The synergistic effect of the factors on soil erosion is greater than that of single factor. Therefore, the combined action of multiple factors have a significant impact on soil erosion in Weibei mining area.

Key words: Times New Roman", ,serif, soil erosion')">">soil erosion, RUSLE model, Loess Plateau, geographical detector, coal mining area, driving factors