Changing Coal Mining Brownfields into Green Infrastructure Based on Ecological Potential Assessment in Xuzhou, Eastern China

Abstract

It is widely recognized that brownfield regeneration to green space is a sustainable form of urban development. However, it is essential to choose those brownfields that have the greatest potential to be integrated into urban green infrastructure (GI). This paper addresses how to quantitatively assess the ecological potential of coal mining brownfields at the city level, and looks at how these brownfields can be best adapted to enhance the GI system. Taking Xuzhou as an example, an ecological potential assessment method for brownfield regeneration to green space is established considering both its ecological importance and the capacity of maintaining GI connectivity. The results show that more than half of the coal mining brownfields have relatively higher ecological importance values, and only four patches play an important role in maintaining GI connectivity. The final ecological potential values of brownfield regeneration to green space are obtained by overlaying the values of ecological importance and the capacity values of maintaining GI connectivity. Then, all the brownfields are divided into five groups according to their ecological potential values, which are significantly different in each group. Around 51.35% of the brownfields have a high or very high potential for restoration to GI, which are distributed in the southeastern part of the western mining area and the central part of the eastern mining area. The presented method can assist reclamation scientists and urban planners in decision making based on quantitative analysis.