Author(s)

Gbele Ouattara^1*, Gnammytchet Barthélémy Koffi¹, Allou Gnanzou², Kouakou Alphonse Yao¹

¹Laboratory of Civil Engineering, Geosciences and Geographic Sciences, National Polytechnic Institute Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Ya-moussoukro, Ivory Coast.
²Laboratory of Geology, Basement and Metallogeny, UFR-STRM, Félix Houphouët-Boigny University, Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Ivory Coast is a country rich in base metals and precious minerals: gold, manganese, diamond, iron, bauxite, cobalt and nickel. These natural resources are exposed to destruction and fragmentation by mining activities. The artisanal and small-scale exploitation of gold are increasingly practiced in our rural areas. These activities escape often in the control and monitoring of the mining administration. In order to better constrain these activities on the environment, the present work used remote sensing imageries to see its spatio-temporal impacts in the rural world in central Ivory Coast. The results show that gold artisanal activities have been practiced since 2013 and are experiencing an increasingly important growth. We note a devastation of forests and savannahs, a pollution of surface water, as well as an increase in poverty in rural areas. These activities are practiced near habited areas (villages). This creates a reduction of cultivatable soil. Remote sensing imageries make it possible to quickly map areas at large-scale gold mining in time and space.

Gold Panning, Artisanal Mining, Space and Time, Remote Sensing Imageries, Ivory Coast, West Africa

Ouattara, G. , Koffi, G. , Gnanzou, A. and Yao, K. (2022) Analysis of the Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Central Ivory Coast, West Africa. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 10, 136-148. doi: 10.4236/gep.2022.109009.