Abstract
Environmental impact assessment is now an
integral part of mining operations. Remote sensing data
enables the identification, delineating, and monitoring of
pollution sources and affected areas, including derelict land,
and changes in surface land use and to water bodies. The
aim of this work was to evaluate the use of multi-temporal
Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 images, SPOT Panchromatic, and
ASTER data to map the natural environment on a local
scale, and to assess the impact of mining activities by
indicating the changes on land and water resources. Three
case studies are presented: Lake Vegoritis and the Amynteon
mine (both located in northern Greece) and the Lavrio
mine area, in central Greece. We found that using high
resolution satellite remote sensing data and state of the art
GIS techniques with parallel development of a fully integrated
geospatial database system provided monitoring and
feedback at appropriate spatial scales; therefore, such data
can be used for long-term environmental management and
monitoring of reclamation and rehabilitation of mining
areas.