Global Surface Mining and Land Reclamation of Time Series from 1985–2022

Surface mining has profound impacts on ecosystems, contributing to land degradation, vegetation loss, pollution, and threats to biodiversity. Given the rapidly rising demand for raw materials, understanding the dynamics of mining and reclamation processes is essential to support sustainable development. Here, we integrate and analyze a large set of mines distributed worldwide based on their known land extent circa year 2020. We integrated time-series data of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), nighttime light (NTL) intensity, and land use to detect and identify changes within mine sites from 1985 to 2022 and assess spatiotemporal trajectories of mining and reclamation processes. The dataset comprises 74,780 polygons, covering a total area of 83,155 km². Our dataset obtained the maximum potential mining disturbance boundary—the cumulative outer envelope of mining-induced land disturbance over the study period.