Quantifying a decade of coal mining growth and forest loss in the Hasdeo Arand Forest, India

Open-cast coal mining in forested regions presents a persistent sustainability challenge, where extraction can generate long-term ecological impacts that are difficult to quantify using administrative records alone. This case study reconstructs a twelve-year physical history of the Parsa East and Kente Basan (PEKB) coal mine, situated within the Hasdeo Arand forest of central India, an ecologically sensitive sal-dominated landscape and recognized elephant movement corridor. Using multi-temporal satellite imagery (Landsat 8 and PlanetScope), manual delineation, and consistent visual-interpretation criteria, we mapped annual changes in the mine’s surface footprint and estimated associated forest conversion between 2013 and 2025. Results show substantial landscape transformation. The mine footprint expanded from 218 hectares in 2013 to 1,389 hectares by mid-2025. Over the same interval, approximately 1,013 hectares of closed-canopy forest were converted, indicating that 73% of the final footprint lay on land that was forested at the study’s outset. Expansion unfolded in distinct phases, including a marked surge in clearing forest between 2023 and 2025 after a temporary slowdown. The findings illustrate how Earth Observation enables transparent, replicable tracking of long-term physical change in extractive landscape, offering independent evidence of cumulative forest loss and disturbance. Such time-resolved mapping provides a foundation for sustainability assessments, ecological risk assessments, and future integration with monitoring of biodiversity, climate-related indicators, and land-use governance across similar mining-affected forest regions.