Divergent Spatiotemporal Evolution of Ecological Quality in Open-pit versus Underground Mining Areas Identified by Integrated Remote Sensing Methods

This dataset provides the essential code and underlying data for calculating and analyzing the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) of the Dexing and Liwu copper mining areas. The data processing and analysis are executed using a Python script named RSEI_landsat.ipynb, which is configured for the macOS operating system. All required Python libraries are explicitly specified at the beginning of the script. Prior to execution, the root directory name must be changed from "Dataset" to "Landsat8" to ensure accurate file path resolution.
The dataset comprises several foundational data directories. The CLCD_dexing and CLCD_liwu folders contain surface land-use classification and transition matrices for the two mining areas, derived from China's Land-Use/Cover Datasets (Yang and Huang, 2025). The DEM_e directory stores the Digital Elevation Model data of the research areas, obtained from Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (DLR e.V. and Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, 2010). The SHP_e folder includes the boundary shapefiles of the mining regions, and the WaterMask directory provides the perennial water body distribution, sourced from JRC Global Surface Water v1.4 (Pekel et al., 2016).
Additionally, the repository contains processed remote sensing and ecological metrics for both mining areas. Using Dexing as an example with the Liwu directories following an identical file structure, the dexing_main folder includes raster images of four remote sensing indices including NDVI, LST, NDBSI, and WET computed from Landsat satellite data via the Google Earth Engine platform. The dexing_main_norm directory stores the normalized versions of these four indices. The calculated RSEI images and the Delta RSEI images are located in dexing_norm_RSEI and dexing_norm_delta, respectively. The dexing_SVD_Analysis_Results_5_Years folder contains the output maps generated from the empirical orthogonal function analysis applied to the RSEI data spanning the years 2004 to 2024. Finally, the Landscape_Metrics_Results directory records the landscape pattern indices specifically for ecologically degraded zones within the mining areas, and the Land_Cover_Area_Statistics folder supplies the comprehensive land cover distribution statistics.