Spatiotemporal Analysis of Total Suspended Solids in Water Bodies and Mapping Mining Areas in Suriname and French Guiana

Abstract

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has made several environmental impacts, resulting in the significant siltation of water bodies due to the deposition of sediments on riverbanks. Based on this perspective, this study aims to investigate the water bodies and regions most impacted by mining activities, especially in relation to the increase in the Total Suspended Solids (TSS) caused by ASGM, focusing on the territories of Suriname and French Guiana, over the period from 2017 to 2023, through the creation of an algorithm in Google Earth Engine. This research also aims to map and describe active mining in this region using the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) method, which achieved an overall accuracy of 82% and a kappa index of 0.77. The results reveal that from 2017 to 2024, there was an increase of 148.09 km2 in mining, with an average increase in TSS of up to 167 mg/L in water bodies most affected by mining activities. Finally, the continued importance of using remote sensing technologies, such as GEE, together with innovative methodological approaches, to monitor and manage natural resources in a sustainable manner is highlighted.