Resumen:
Gold mining (GM) impacts are devastating, including landscape change and deforestation,
loss of ecosystem services and native species, contribution of carbon emission and
sediment loads, reduced water quality, and soil and air contamination. The rapid increase
in this activity across the Amazon basin, the scarcity of studies, the difficult detection of
impacts and monitoring require integrated techniques that can assess the impact of GM
on this important ecosystem. Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a useful tool for evaluating
anthropic activities incidence on the dynamics of planetary coverage. Thus, this study
seeks to use a remote sensing technique in GEE to assess land cover and land use changes
dynamics and impacts derived from GM activity over a 6-year period in the Ecuadorian
Amazon and to associate them with quality auxiliary data water and metal contamination
in water and sediment to understand the degree of contamination and its risks to
environmental health. GM doubled its extent from 0.15% (651 ha) to 0.30% (1317 ha) of
the total study area, degrading mainly forested areas and leaving heterogeneous
landscapes covered by grassy or bare soils. The combination of GM area change
indicators with environmental quality data has made it possible to assess the mining
activity impact in an integrative way in 9 GM sites, showing that sites with rapid increase
of its extent and landscape degradation have a direct effect on metal contamination in
water and physicochemical parameters, while places with lower increase have a higher
occurrence of metals in sediments and a greater change in its location than in its
extension.
