Gabriel
GIS Analyst, Telematica, Peru
Title: Gold mining and land cover change in Madre de Dios, Peru: A remote sensing study using landsat-5 thematic mapper data
Biography
Biography: Gabriel
Abstract
Peru has reputedly the largest non-discovered gold resources on earth. In a country with a 30% poverty rate, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) offers a source of employment and a strategy to fight poverty among the low income sectors of the population. ASM is found in four geographic regions: Central South (Ica, Ayacucho and Arequipa), Puno, La Libertad and Madre de Dios. Few government regulations and low cost of mining operations are driving land cover changes on these locations, but to unknown extent and magnitude. The following study applies Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data to create land cover maps and detect land cover changes between 1986 and 2011 resulting from artisanal and small-scale gold mining for a ~10316 km2 region in the Department of Madre de Dios, southeastern Peru. TM images from 1986, 1996, 2006 and 2011 were used to map five categories: dense forest, water, cleared land and sediment, mine tailings and grassland. Overall map accuracy ranged between 81-84%. Throughout the 25-years period, forest cover decreased by 915.98 km2 (7.09%), cleared land and sediment increased by 105.06 km2 (0.81%), grassland increased by 348.35 km2 (2.70%), as did mine tailings, which increased by 396.15 km2 (3.07%). Dense forest areas contributed to an increase in grassland (44.35%), mine tailings (38%) and cleared land and sediment (17.65%). Land cover changes in Madre de Dios are caused by ASM activities in concessions with title (53.4%), in concessions with title in progress (12.6%), and in areas outside the boundaries of mining concessions and mining claims (34%).