Background Timely and effective monitoring of the current status of eco-geological environment holds great significance for scientific decision-making regarding both geological environment protection and ecological restoration in underground coal mining areas. Owing to its advantage of large-scale and rapid monitoring, airborne remote sensing technology has emerged as an important approach to the eco-geological environment monitoring of mining areas.

Advances  This study first clarifies relevant concepts of eco-geological environment monitoring, as well as the monitoring requirements and contents specific to underground coal mining areas. Accordingly, it presents a summary of the advances in research on airborne remote sensing technology for the eco-geological environment monitoring of the areas through a literature survey, followed by a discussion of both the limitations of existing studies and future research opportunities. It can be concluded that the eco-geological environment monitoring of underground coal mining areas is to, by using various observation platforms and technologies, achieve the quantitative monitoring and assessment of the structural and functional changes in the ecological-geological-hazard coupling environment system, along with disaster risks, in mining areas under the disturbance of underground coal mining. The purpose is to provide support for scientific decision-making regarding ecological restoration, as well as the prevention and control of geological disasters, in underground coal mining areas. Underground coal mining activities generally lead to geological and ecological issues such as surface subsidence, vegetation destruction, soil pollution, and water body deterioration in underground coal mining areas. In this context, airborne remote sensing has found wide applications in the eco-geological environment monitoring in underground coal mining areas, involving the monitoring of vegetation indices, soil indices, atmosphere indices, water body indices, geological environment, and hazard-related environment, yielding considerable achievements. Nevertheless, multiple challenges are yet to be addressed, including unstable data acquisition, insufficient collaboration among multi-source platforms and various sensors, and a limited number of elements and indicators that can be monitored currently.

Prospects Targeting typical complex flight environments, such as windy-sandy areas in western China and areas with thick loose layers, future efforts should focus on the research and development of data preprocessing algorithms enabling data anti-interference, dynamic matching, and spatiotemporal correction for airborne remote sensing. It is necessary to gradually establish collaborative monitoring technology systems based on multi-source platforms and sensors for the eco-geological environment in underground coal mining areas by fully leveraging the collaboration between multi-platform and multi-type sensors. Furthermore, it is advisable to enhance the capabilities of multi-source data collaboration and fusion, improve the monitoring accuracy of certain indices, and expand the eco-geological environment monitoring indices related to ecological restoration.