Analysis of Land Cover Changes in the Brown Canyon Mining Area Associated with Restrictions on Community Activities

Abstract

The high land use as area mining has resulted in changes in land cover and impacts the surrounding environment. In 2020, the Semarang City government implemented a Restrictions on Community Activities (RCA) policy to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, indirectly limiting mining activities in the area of the Brown Canyon mine. This study aims to analyze the land cover change in the Brown Canyon mine area linked to the RCA policy. Assessment of land cover change is carried out by land cover classification on multitemporal Landsat imagery using Random Forest (RF) method. Based on the classification results, it was found that there was a change in mining land cover in Brown Canyon which increased by 3.713 Ha when the RCA policy was implemented from 46.305 Ha to 50.018 Ha. Likewise, after the implementation of RCA, there was an increase of 3.510 Ha from 50.018 Ha to 53.528 Ha. The accuracy of land cover classification before RCA was 90.12%. During RCA was 88.18%, and after RCA was 89.94%. Then, if related to the results of the interview data processing, the change in mining land cover that occurred was influenced by mining activities in the study area during the RCA period. So, it can also be said that RCA does not significantly influence mining activities in the Brown Canyon mining area. Several suggestions can be used for further research, such as using high-resolution satellite imagery and having mining area boundary data for each site.