M. F. Reshetnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology, the Federal State-Funded Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education (FSFEI HPE), Krasnoyarsk, Russia:

Zenkov I. V., Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Honored Ecologist of Russian Federation, zenkoviv@mail.ru

Institute of Computational Technologies, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia:
Nefedov B. N., Candidate of Engineering Sciences
Zayats V. V., Research Engineer

Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia:
Kiryushina E. V., Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences

Scientific research recently undertaken either in Russia or in other countries increasingly uses remote Earth sensing techniques. At the next stage of our studies, we assess ecology of disturbed land represented by open pit mines, external dumps and tailings pond in the area of depleted iron ore deposits in the Republic of Khakassia. Monitoring of vegetation ecosystem in the specified area used free-access remote sensing data. Based on the interpretation of satellite images over the monitoring period from 1998 to 2016, the change in the bold area at the depleted deposits is determined. The dynamics and structure of vegetable blanket in the open pit mines, at the dumps and tailings pond is revealed. An insignificant increase in the disturbed land area from 595 ha in 1999 to 633.3 ha in 2916 resulted in the proportional growth of the bold area of mining and dumping from 559.9 to 571.1 ha. By the end of the monitoring period in 2016, the vegetation ecosystem recovery coefficients without special reclamation of the distributed land were 0.031, 0.05 and 0.11 for the areas of the Teisk and Abagas open pit mines and the land occupied by external overburden dumps and tailings ponds, respectively. The article illustrates application of satellite survey data in solving such critical problems as environmental impact of open pit iron ore mining. By our estimates, self-recovery of two separate industrial landscapes formed under mining of the Teisk and Abagas iron ore deposits on the eastern shoulder of the Kuznetsky Alatau has very low and environmentally unacceptable rates. Such conclusion is confirmed by the determined averaged coefficient of vegetation ecosystem recovery at the very low level of 0.088, which means healing and stable vegetation cover in the area making merely 8.8 % of the total disturbed land.

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