Assessment of land disturbance based on satellite images near mining industry enterprises

The area of disturbed lands that have lost their original economic value is the most important indicator of industrial impact, since they are ecologically dangerous and cause significant economic damage. In the structure of disturbed lands, 67 % are violations during the development of mineral deposits. At present, statistical provision with data on disturbed lands is limited by the problem of the lack of statistical reporting by municipalities. The assessment of the nature of disturbed lands at the local level carried out using two methods: automatic software and manual image interpretation, showed that the dynamics of disturbed lands for individual deposits is smoother, more logical and explainable than for the regions of their location, which most likely confirms the low quality of statistics in this area. Analysis of space images showed that the greatest destructive impact on the environment occurs at the time of waste rock storage, as well as in the process of expanding the zone of active raw material extraction. According to the results of the analysis of the selected space images, the highest rate of increment of disturbed lands is characterized by large and old oil fields (an average of 10 % per year) and coal mining with an average annual increment of over 5 % even for a new deposit. Next comes the mining of gold and iron ore. Deposits located in more northern regions increase disturbed lands with greater intensity. In terms of the overall scale of disturbed land increment, only half of the deposits under consideration did not exceed the average Russian increment rate of 6.2 %. Large and old deposits mostly exceed the average annual values. The largest excesses were observed in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug and Kemerovo Oblast, which is quite significant, since these regions specialize in oil (Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug) and coal (Kemerovo Region) production.