Abstract
Mining activities have caused severe ecological and environmental problems worldwide. Accurate
and reliable assessment methods are essential for identifying ecological changes in mining areas and
for supporting effective preventive and mitigation measures to reduce environmental damage, improve
ecosystem quality, and maintain suitable living conditions for humans. However, significant challenges
remain in the precise evaluation of environmental changes in mining regions. Huainan City, located
in Anhui Province, is one of China’s most intensively exploited coal-mining areas, where decades of
extraction have led to pronounced geological instability and ecological degradation. Taking the Huainan
mining area as a case study, this paper applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with
a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model to systematically assess environmental quality from multiple
perspectives. The evaluation results are highly consistent with field observations and provide reliable
scientific evidence to support ecological restoration planning and risk mitigation. Furthermore, this
assessment framework demonstrates strong applicability and scalability, and can be extended from local
and regional levels to broader environmental assessment of other coal-mining regions in China and
worldwide.