Abstract
Despite ever-increasing material extraction on the global scale, very few studies have focused on the relationship between mining activities, overburden, and landfilling. This is mainly due to the lack of statistical data. Yet, large mining activities cause environmental strain to the natural environment, and are often cause of irreversible alterations to the natural landscape. To circumvent this problem, we develop a methodology that employs the digital elevation model and land cover to detect and analyze mining and landfilling site over time. We test our methodology with the case of Germany for the years 2000–2010. We then confront our results with statistically available data, to verify whether this methodology can be applied to other countries. Results from the analysis of satellite data give 15.3 Pg of extracted materials and 7.8 Pg of landfilled materials, while statistics report 29.4 Pg and 1.8 Pg, respectively. This large difference was likely due to the different frequency of recording, where satellite data was updated after 10 years, while statistics were reported yearly. The analysis of the anthropogenic disturbance with spatial information can effectively contribute to observe, analyze, and quantify mining activities, overburden, and landfills, and can thus provide policy makers with useful and practical information regarding resource usage and waste management.
Highlights
Understanding the long-term global dynamics of stocks and flows of materials is essential to achieve the decoupling of the economy and material consumption [7,8], and this topic is being investigated by many researchers qualitatively and quantitatively tracking material flows to develop databases and Resources 2019, 8, 126; doi:10.3390/resources8030126
This study aims to clarify the dynamics of anthropogenic disturbance and quantify the overburden of mining activities by presenting a novel methodology which relies on remote sensing techniques
The transfer of materials between the ecosphere and the socio-economic sphere is increasing more rapidly than ever, and the dynamics of material flows and stocks in the anthroposphere have been explored by many researchers
Summary
Material stocks are essential to the development of societies as they support economic activities and provide essential services, yet to continue to operate they require a continuous input of materials for their maintenance and replacement [5,6] This continuous maintenance inflow is associated to a roughly equivalent amount of resources which are removed in the form of waste [3]. The accounting of material stock and flow plays important roles to monitor the decoupling of natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth [12]. Research to understand the environmental impacts associated with material extraction and waste flows is essential for making sustainable management plans at both the city and national scale [23,24]. Having a clear understanding of the scale of national and local waste flows is an important issue for regional planners and politicians [25]
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