Assessing land cover change resulting from large surface mining development Rasim Latifovic a, * , Kostas Fytas b , Jing Chen c , Jacek Paraszczak b a Natural Resources Canada, Earth Sciences Sector, Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, 588 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ont., Canada K1A 0Y7 b De ´partment de ge ´nie des mines de la me ´tallurgie et de ´s materiaux, Universite ´ Laval Que ´bec, Canada c Department of Geography, University Toronto, Canada Received 22 July 2004; accepted 2 November 2004 Abstract A remote sensing based land cover change assessment methodology is presented and applied to a case study of the Oil Sands Mining Development in Athabasca, Alta., Canada. The primary impact was assessed using an information extraction method applied to two LANDSAT scenes. The analysis based on derived land cover maps shows a decrease of natural vegetation in the study area (715,094 ha) for 2001 approximately 8.64% relative to 1992. Secondary assessment based on a key resources indicator (KRI), calculated using normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI measurements acquired by NOAA–AVHRR satellites), air temperature and global radiation was performed for a time period from 1990 to 2002. KRI trend analysis indicates a slightly decreasing trend in vegetation greenness in close proximity to the mining development. A good agreement between the time series of inter-annual variations in NDVI and air temperature is observed increasing the confidence of NDVI as an indicator for assessing vegetation productivity and its sensitivity to changes in local conditions. Crown Copyright # 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Remote sensing; Land cover; Environmental impact assessment; Surface mining 1. Introduction Quantification of the effects that mining activities have on ecosystems is a major issue in sustainable development and resources management. The conflict between mining activities and environmental protec- tion has intensified over recent years, emphasizing the need for improved information on the dynamics of impacts at regional and local scales. Assessing cumulative environmental impacts is an important aspect of sustainable management and involves balancing benefits from resource exploitation against environmental degradation. The success in defin- ing an appropriate balance directly depends on our ability to quantitatively predict and assess impacts on the environment caused by industrial develop- ments. www.elsevier.com/locate/jag International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 7 (2005) 29–48 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 613 947 1816; fax: +1 613 947 1383. E-mail address: rasim.latifovic@ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca (R. Latifovic). 0303-2434/$ – see front matter. Crown Copyright # 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jag.2004.11.003