Monitoring Flooding Damages in Vegetation Caused by Mining Activities Using Optical Remote Sensing

Ground removal during the mineral extraction in mine galleries provokes permanent changes in ground compacting during mine exploitation and after mine closure. In extreme cases, the loss of cohesion in ground layer over mines causes surface subsidence and eventually the emergence of flooded areas on the surface. Mining companies are obligated to the surveillance and mending of damages caused by the mines during and after the exploitation of the mine. For that reason, it is necessary to determine accurately if the causes of a flooding are related to their activity or to other causes. The objective of the present study is to locate mine-related flooding using a two-step workflow that involves remote sensing data. First, a screening on water bodies was applied using multispectral data at landscape level followed by a multi-temporal analysis to detect changes in the distribution of water bodies. A second step addressed the differentiation of mine-related flooded areas from other dynamic water bodies using high-resolution hyperspectral data over vegetation affected by flooding. The proposed workflow reduces costs of monitoring for mining companies by identifying potential flooding areas, while an exhaustive study can be done in few selected areas to assure the causes of the flooding using technology that is more sophisticated. Even though supervision by experts is required at some steps of the workflow, the proposed methods can be integrated in a geoportal to permit a broad spectrum of users the access to the information.