The work, authored by researchers Tim Werner of the University of Melbourne in Australia and Liang Tang of Chengdu University of Technology in China, maps in detail the boundaries of a total of 65,585 km² of mining sites around the world. The results were published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment, and the geographic data was made available for others to use.

A total of 74,548 "mining polygons" were identified in the study. Of these, 79% were concentrated in just 13 countries: Brazil, China, the United States, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Ukraine, Ghana, Canada, India, Kazakhstan and Chile. Just over a third of the polygons corresponded to areas considered large, with more than 30 km², and almost 55% represented much smaller mining sites, with less than 0.15 km².

In a troubling finding, nearly 10 percent of total mining polygons are within supposedly protected areas such as national parks and UNESCO World Heritage Sites. While mining in protected areas is nothing new, now the data brings more detail globally. There are 6,232 km² of mining operations that violate the boundaries of protected areas.

The main element mined in the polygons identified in the study was coal, followed by gold, copper, iron, phosphate and salt.

Basis for further studies

According to Werner, the data presented by the research can be used for a series of evaluations on the negative impacts of the mining chain.

"Protected areas are a point of view, but you can look at the distribution of different bird species, or the risk of flooding, for example. Or how a mine will be affected by climate change in the future, rising sea levels and extreme heat. How are they situated in relation to indigenous populations? There are so many important issues we can address," he told Mongabay, who addressed the study.

"What I hope is that people will use the study to understand, in a contextualized way, the consequences of supply chains and the use of mining," he added.

Werner also points out that the level of spatial detail included in the study could be a breakthrough for researchers, journalists and analysts seeking to determine the ecological and social impacts of mining in specific regions. For, in addition to mining itself, the research brings, for example, the areas of specific resources that relate to this activity, such as garbage deposits, tailings dams and ore processing infrastructure.

"So you can imagine that if a pile of garbage is a source of pollution, you can use the dataset to more accurately understand the direction where pollutants are coming from."

Source: Um só Planeta