Global mining deforestation footprint data from 2000 to 2019

The data in this repository is available under the Open Database License: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/. Any rights in individual contents of the database are licensed under the Database Contents License: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/dbcl/1.0/

This repository includes two datasets. The first is a collection of polygons covering mines globally and the associated forest cover loss from 2000 to 2019. The polygons were derived by merging the "global-scale mining polygons version 2" (Maus et al., 2022) and mining and quarry polygon features extracted from the OpenStreetMap database (OpenStreetMap contributors, 2017). To remove double counting of areas the overlaps between the datasets were resolved by uniting intersecting features into single polygon features, i.e. keeping only the external borders of intersecting features. A random visual check was conducted, and a few small manual editing of polygons was performed where errors were identified.

The resulting dataset is encoded as a Geopackage in the file 'global_mining_polygons.gpkg'. The GeoPackage includes a single layer with 192,584 entries called 'mining_polygons' with the following attributes:

• id<string> unique feature identifier
• isoa3<string> ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes
• country<string> country names
• area<double> area of the polygon in squared kilometres
• geom<polygon> the geometry of the features in geographical coordinates WGS84

The second dataset provides annual time series of global tree cover loss within mines from 2000 to 2019, covering all polygons in the above dataset. The area of tree cover loss for each polygon was calculated from the Global Forest Change database (Hansen et al., 2013). Each polygon also has additional string attributes with biomes derived from Ecoregions 2017 ^{© Resolve} (Dinerstein et al., 2017) and the level of protection derived from The World Database on Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2022).

This dataset is encoded in CSV format in the file 'global_mining_forest_loss.csv', which includes 416,412 entries and 53 variables, such that:

• id<string> unique feature identifier
• id_hcluster<string> unique feature identifier
• list_of_commodities<string> a comma-separated list of commodities
• isoa3<string> ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes
• country<string> country names
• ecoregion<string> ecoregion name
• biome<string> biome name
• year<numeric> the year
• area_forest_loss_XXX_YYY<double> the area of forest cover loss within a polygon per year in squared kilometres.

The values of tree cover loss are disaggregated per initial percentage of tree cover (XXX) and per protection level (YYY).

• XXX can take one of:
  • 000: total tree cover loss independently from the initial tree cover
  • 025: tree cover loss on pixels with initial tree cover between 0 and 25%
  • 050: tree cover loss on pixels with initial tree cover between 25 and 50%
  • 075: tree cover loss on pixels with initial tree cover between 50 and 75%
  • 100: tree cover loss on pixels with initial tree cover between 75 and 100%
• YYY can take one of:
  • la: tree cover loss within strict nature reserve
  • Ib: tree cover loss within wilderness area
  • II: tree cover loss within national park
  • III: tree cover loss within natural monument or feature
  • IV: tree cover loss within habitat/species management area
  • V: tree cover loss within protected landscape/seascape
  • VI: tree cover loss within PA with sustainable use of natural resources
  • p: tree cover loss within any type of protection, including not applicable, not assigned, or not reported
  • none: when YYY is omitted, total tree cover loss within the polygon

For details about the protection levels definition see the UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2022). The id can be used to link polygons to forest loss data.