## 3 Results
### Landscape Transformation, Vegetation Cover Loss, and Mining Area Expansion over the Rajmahal Hills  
The detailed LULC statistics, such as area coverage, % area of each class out of the total area, area change, and the annual rate of change) of different classes are provided in Table 3. The LULC statistics indicated a significant loss in vegetation cover and a remarkable increment in the mining coverage during 1990-2020. Vegetation coverage over the Rajmahal Hills decreased to \(\sim\)54% (2020) from 64% (1990), while mining extent increased up to \(\sim\)2% (2020) from 0.3% (1990) of the total area. In total, \(\sim\)340 km\({}^{2}\) of vegetation area was lost at the rate of \(-\)0.005% per year from 1990-2020. On the other hand, mining expanded to \(\sim\)54 km\({}^{2}\) with an annual expansion rate of 0.056%. Stone mining has been predominantly practiced in and around the Rajmahal Hills (Z1, Z2, Z4, Z5, Z7, and Z8 in Figure 4), along with a few coal mines (Z3 and Z6 in Figure 4). The spatiotemporal mining expansion over the Rajmahal Hills is presented in Figure 4. It was observed that the stone mining areas significantly increased in 2020, which could be attributed to large-scale stone quarrying in the last decade (after 2010), as demarcated in several zones in Figure 4 (Z1, Z2, Z4, Z5, Z7, and Z8). A few recent field photographs  
Figure 3: Spatial distribution of LULC features over the Rajmahal Hills for the years (**a**) 1990, (**b**) 2000, (**c**) 2010, (**d**) 2020. The zoomed regions show the selected mining zones. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Classes} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{Area in km\({}^{2}\)} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{Area change in km\({}^{2}\)} \\  & \multicolumn{4}{c}{(The \% area of each class out of the total area)} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{(The rate of change in \%)} \\ \cline{2-9}  & 1990 & 2000 & 2010 & 2020 & 1990–2000 & 2000–2010 & 2010–2020 & 1990–2020 \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Vegetation} & 2218.33 & 2159.46 & 2033.32 & 1878.86 & \(-\)58.863 & \(-\)126.147 & \(-\)154.453 & \(-\)339.463 \\  & (64.20) & (62.50) & (58.85) & (54.38) & (\(-\)0.003) & (\(-\)0.006) & (\(-\)0.008) & (\(-\)0.005) \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Mining} & 10.06 & 13.47 & 23.56 & 64.15 & 3.4083 & 10.0899 & 40.5972 & 54.0954 \\  & (0.29) & (0.39) & (0.68) & (1.86) & (0.029) & (0.056) & (0.1) & (0.056) \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Water} & 11.61 & 12.61 & 9.65 & 12.80 & 1.0089 & \(-\)2.9682 & 3.15 & 1.1907 \\  & (0.34) & (0.37) & (0.28) & (0.37) & (0.008) & (\(-\)0.027) & (0.028) & (0.003) \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Others} & 1215.25 & 1269.70 & 1388.72 & 1499.42 & 54.446 & 119.025 & 110.705 & 284.176 \\  & (35.17) & (36.75) & (40.19) & (43.40) & (0.004) & (0.009) & (0.008) & (0.006) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: LULC statistics of different classes during 1990–2020. The percentage changes are kept inside the brackets. of stone mining areas (Z4 and Z4) can be seen in Figure 5. The utmost increment in the mining area was estimated during 2010-2020, where nearly 41 km\({}^{2}\) of the mining area was expanded over the Rajmahal Hills with an annual growth rate of 0.1%. The remarkable rise in the mining patches was mainly seen in Figure 4, especially between 2010 and 2020. Before the 2000s, only the Rajmahal coal mines (Z3; Figure 4) were observed with significant mining patches during 1990 and 2000. The remaining mining clusters, including Pachhwara Central Coal Mines, Kathaldih (Z6; Figure 4), seem functional after the 2000s. A few small mining patches were also seen over a few stone mining regions (Z2, Z4, Z5, Z8; Figure 4), which were possibly functional before the 2000s with lesser production. Thus, it can be assumed that the mining activity has been dramatically accelerated in the last two decades and has caused a significant loss of vegetation cover over the Rajmahal Hills.