Multitemporal satellite data in mine waste monitoring of Medet copper deposit

Denitsa Borisova; Hristo Nikolov; Doyno Petkov; Banush Banushev

doi:10.1117/12.974423

25 October 2012 Multitemporal satellite data in mine waste monitoring of Medet copper deposit

Denitsa Borisova, Hristo Nikolov, Doyno Petkov, Banush Banushev

Proceedings Volume 8538, Earth Resources and Environmental Remote Sensing/GIS Applications III; 85380J (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.974423
Event: SPIE Remote Sensing, 2012, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

The anthropogenic impact of the mining industry on the environment is seen all over the world. In the last decades several mining areas and corresponding waste disposal sites in Bulgaria are being monitored for ongoing reclamation processes. In this research we were focused on one environmental status of one of the most important copper producing fields for our country - Medet deposit. The objectives of the study were: (1) to analyze multispectral satellite images for 1980 - 2000 in order to assess the environmental pollution from the mining activity in the Medet open pit mine in temporal perspective; (2) to prove that by means of remote sensing an integrated environmental impact assessment can be made. After ceasing its exploitation in 1994 a rehabilitation program for soil cover and hydrographic network was established and launched. A continuous task is the monitoring of these activities from the beginning for at least 15 years period. We consider that revealing the potential of satellite multispectral and multitemporal imagery will provide valuable information on the impact of this long-term mining activity on the environment. One of the first tasks was to prepare thematic maps for several, non-successive years of the affected areas at regional scale. On the next step change detection methods were used to assess the short-term reclamation activities by examination of vegetation cover status in the areas surrounding the mine. To complete this tasks data from Landsat TM/ETM+ instruments combined with in-situ measured data was used. For data processing several techniques, both standard, such as basic and advanced statistics, image enhancement and data fusion, and novel methods for supervised classification were used. The results obtained show that used data and the implemented approach are useful in environmental monitoring and economically attractive for the company responsible for the ecological state of the region.

Citation Download Citation

Denitsa Borisova, Hristo Nikolov, Doyno Petkov, and Banush Banushev "Multitemporal satellite data in mine waste monitoring of Medet copper deposit", Proc. SPIE 8538, Earth Resources and Environmental Remote Sensing/GIS Applications III, 85380J (25 October 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.974423

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