ABSTRACT
A B S T R A C T : Assessment of the possible impact of existing and future mining projects located in
remote areas may be difficult and costly. This may have an adverse effect on the process of issuing
mine permits and development of new mines. A remote sensing based land cover change assess-
ment methodology presented in this paper is a promising avenue to render this process more mea-
ningful, precise and affordable. It has been applied to a case study of the O i l Sands M i n i n g De-
velopment in the north-east of Canadian province of Alberta. So-called Athabasca O i l Sands Re-
gion ( A O S R ) is a place of unprecedented growth of open-pit mining operations. This study was
focused on the primary impact onto the landscape and vegetation, considered as all surface distur-
bances resulting from exploration, mining development, urban development and logging. This im-
pact was assessed using an information extraction method applied to two L A N D S A T 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. It has been demonstrated that the
methodology presented here provides reliable results and is fully applicable for the assessment of
the environmental impact of huge-scale mining operations.
