Evaluation and Measurement of the Territorial Expansion of Informal Mining in the Ramis High Basin, Puno, Perú Using Satellite Images

Abstract

The following research is about the environmental problems who produce the gold exploitation of informal mining in three sectors of the Ramis River High Basin (CARR, due to its name in Spanish), which is one of the most impacting economic activities in the environment and society that is currently in Peru. In spite of the existence of specific norms oriented to their formalization and regulation, their negative effects have expanded and increased considerably in the last 12 years. Precisely, remote sensing technologies are very efficient low-cost tools to evaluate and analyze the environmental issues of the area of interest (which belongs to the hydrographic basin of the Titicaca Lake), being able to see the evolution that gold mining had in this area by quantifying the area that showed changes in land use for the period between 1984 and 2015, using Landsat multispectral satellite images.
The results of the digital analysis of satellite images of 26 different years for detect the surfaces who had a change in land use, is compared chronologically with the occurrence of social, political and economic events such as the gold international daily price, socio-environmental conflict demonstrations or government intervention actions, factors that influenced the territorial expansion or stagnation of informal mining activities in the area, as well as the effectiveness of
the actions taken by the competent authorities for their control or mitigation.