evandethier/global-river-mining

Data files for analyzing the effects of gold and precious mineral mining in river systems. This work is a global-scale application of satellite remote sensing of river water quality, particularly of suspended sediment in rivers. The project is summarized (and version control more rigorously maintained) at https://github.com/evandethier/global-alluvial-mining. 

• All files necessary for producing the results are in the imports.zip file.
• All R Code to do these analyses are in the R.zip file. If the files in the imports folder are arranged in the correct structure, running the R files in sequence will produce the findings and most figures.
• All Google Earth Engine code is in the GEE.zip file. However, all the outputs generated by the GEE code are in the imports.zip file.

I suggest beginning a new R project. It's important that you put the imports folder in the folder where you create the R project. The imports folder must be called `imports` and all sub-folders must also keep their names.

Note that this code will create new folders and files on your computer. However, it does not delete pre-existing files.

Some help navigating can be provided by the following spreadsheets:

• Where files are created and imported is given in `global_river_mining_where_files_are_in_code.xlsx`
• Where figures are created is given in `global_river_mining_where_figs_are_in_code.xlsx`

-- Evan Dethier, 1 May 2023

https://github.com/evandethier

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Related work has been published here:

Applications:

Dethier, E. N., Renshaw, C. E., & Magilligan, F. J. (2022). Rapid changes to global river suspended sediment flux by humans. Science, 376(6600), 1447-1452. DOI: 10.1126/science.abn798

Dethier, E. N., Sartain, S. L., & Lutz, D. A. (2019). Heightened levels and seasonal inversion of riverine suspended sediment in a tropical biodiversity hot spot due to artisanal gold mining. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(48), 23936-23941. doi:10.1073/pnas.1907842116

Methods: 

Dethier, E. N., Renshaw, C. E., & Magilligan, F. J. (2020). Toward Improved Accuracy of Remote Sensing Approaches for Quantifying Suspended Sediment: Implications for Suspended-Sediment Monitoring. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 125(7), e2019JF005033. doi:10.1029/2019jf005033