Phosphate deposits are one of Western Sahara’s few natural resources. At the Bou Craa phosphate mine, 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) from the coastal city of El Aaiún, abundant, pure phosphate deposits lie near the surface.
Mountaintop removal mining dramatically changes the topography across thousands of acres. Mountaintop removal mining alters this topography by reducing the elevation of the ridge lines, flattening out the steep slopes, and also by filling in hollows and stream beds with the excess rock and dirt that once topped the mountains.
Located in the Sudirman Mountains of the Irian Jaya province of Indonesia, the Grasberg complex is one of the largest gold and copper mining operations in the world.
otswana ranks first among the world’s gem-quality diamond producers, and diamond mining makes up 70 percent of the nation’s export revenue. The Jwaneng Diamond Mine, in south-central Botswana, sits atop the convergence of three kimberlite pipes—diamond-rich geologic formations. Because the pipes meet just below the surface and cover some 520,000 square meters (128.5 acres) at ground level, the diamonds are mined from an open pit rather than a mine tunneled below the surface.
In 2007, the Amazon fire season was the worst of this decade. This pair of images shows deforestation and the smoke from intense fires in the 2007 dry season in northwest Rondônia, Brazil.
The Bingham Canyon Mine is one of the largest open-pit mines in the world, measuring over 4 kilometers wide and 1,200 meters deep. Mining first began in Bingham Canyon in the late nineteenth century, when shafts were sunk to remove gold, silver, and lead deposits that played out by the early 1900s. It would take the advent of open-pit mining in 1899 to turn the Bingham copper deposit into an economically favorable resource.
This pair of images reveals how dramatically and rapidly the Amazon can be transformed. The images compare deforested areas (tan) to forest (green) in 2000 (top) versus 2006 (bottom). The area, which is in southern Rondônia southwest of the Pacaás Novos National Park, was almost completely cleared during the period. The decreased greenness of the remaining forest in 2006 may be from a variety of causes: drought, degradation from logging or accidental fire, or different angles of observation during the two satellite overpasses.