Land disturbed by mining acitivites

Download Product Sheet

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Category

• Topographic information
• Impact assessment
• Change detection / continuous monitoring
• Land cover / use
• Near surface geology

• Surface deformation
• Precision ortho-images
• Terrain information
• Water quantity & quality

Uses

Environmental Assessment & Permitting:

• Baseline information to monitor land disturbed by mining activities

Design, Construction & Operations:

• Continuous monitoring of mining activities, infrastructures and land cover changes
• Continuous monitoring of the vegetation close to the mining site
• Can support in detecting illegal mining

Mine Closure & Aftercare

Challenges addressed

• Development and Operations – Affected Land Status
• Development and Operations – Illegal Mining
• Closure and Aftercare – Environmental Monitoring
• Closure and Aftercare – Mapping of Infrastructure
• Closure and Aftercare – Affected Stakeholders

Geo-information needs

• DO-4: Land disturbed by mining activities
• DO-5: Land progressively rehabilitated;
• DO-27 Mapping of illegal mining operations
• CA-1: Demonstration of rehabilitation/revegetation;
• CA-2: Characterisation of flora and fauna;
• CA-4: Demonstration of infrastructure removal;
• CA-6: Demonstrate no impact on a special area of conservation;
• CA-8: Farming activities - confirm the return to baseline conditions for crops/animals

Description

The product reports (for a given area) the land disturbed by the mining operators during the construction and operational phases. By comparing two or multiple satellite images (optical imagery products) acquired at different times, both the mapping and mining authorities can control whether the conducted mining activities are nominal. By combining manual or automatic inspection of those images and the use of a Geographical Information System (GIS) program, vector layers can be generated to delimit the land disturbed by mining activities and investigate the evolution of the land cover throughout the construction and operation phases.

Known restrictions / limitations

Lifecycle stage and demand

Exploration

Environmental Assessment and Permitting

Design, Construction and Operations

Mine Closure and Aftercare

 ■■

■■■■ 

■■ 

Geographic coverage

EARSC Thematic Domain

Domain

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Input data sources

Website

NOTE: Airborne and drone imagery products (optical and infrared) for local and regional analysis might also be used in order to obtain higher image resolution.

Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU)

Minimum detectable feature size (dependent on the input pixel resolution, ~1 - 3 px)

Accuracy / constraints

Thematic accuracy:

>85% threshold for overall accuracy / class accuracy.

Spatial accuracy:

Dependent on the input pixel resolution; typically, ~0.5 - 1 pixel.

Accuracy assessment approach & quality control measures

Dependent on the input pixel resolution; typically, ~0.5 - 1 pixel.

Frequency / timeliness

Digitization of land disturbed by mining activities from imagery products can be completed within a few hours/days of work, dependent on how large the area disturbed by mining activities is.

To tie in with corporate reporting, monthly assessment and reporting would be required.

Availability

Data from Sentinel satellites are freely available through the open data policy of the European Space Agency. Data is made available typically within 6-12 hours of satellite fly-over (similar for Landsat through NASA open data policy).

GeoEye-1, Worldview, SPOT and Pleiades data are commercially licensed and must be purchased through operator/vendor. Usually available within hour(s) of satellite fly-over.

Airborne and drone imagery products can be purchased through operator/vendor. Usually available within hours or days after acquisition.

Delivery / output format

Mining activities

Overview map of mining activities (and evolution in time)

Output: vector formats - shapefile, report on key indicators, client-specified spatial formats

Land cover (land disturbed)

Overview map of land disturbed by mining activities

Output: raster formats - GeoTiff, report on key indicators, client-specified spatial formats

USE CASE