Global Assessment of Mining Activities Using TanDEM-X Digital Elevation Change Maps

The growing global demand for raw materials has led to a significant expansion in mineral extraction, resulting in widespread social and environmental impacts. However, the world's mining areas and the volumes of extracted and deposited materials remain poorly documented, limiting our ability to assess their full impact and implement effective mitigation measures to reduce environmental and social damage. To address these challenges, we use global remote sensing products to estimate the volumes of excavated and deposited materials from opencast mining activities worldwide. Using the recently produced TanDEM-X 30m Change Maps, which provide global elevation change information, and the global-scale mining polygons dataset designating mining areas, we assess the contribution of each continent and country to the volume of excavated and deposited material. Our results show that, globally, the total volume of material excavated between the periods of 2011–2015 and 2016–2022 was 180,989 million cubic meters, while the volume of deposited material was 186,347 million cubic meters. During this period, the depth of the mines (and height of heaps) has increased on average by approximately 2–5 meters per square meter, depending on the continent. In North America, for example, the total excavated volume was equivalent to digging a hole of roughly 10x10x10 meters in size per every square kilometer of the continent, while in Australia, such a hole would be more than twice the size. The majority of opencast mining occurred in China, Indonesia, Australia, Russia, and the U.S. However, when normalized by country area, the data revealed a higher intensity of mining activities in smaller countries such as Suriname and Czechia. The calculated volumes of excavated and deposited material provide a more accurate representation of mining intensity than site area alone and enable cross-site comparisons for global monitoring.