DEVELOPING A REMOTE SENSING PROCESS TO IDENTIFY COLTAN ARTISANAL MINES IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Critical materials include minerals vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and are considered essential for energy and electronic technologies. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) several critical minerals are mined and sold into the global supply chain, for example, cobalt, tin, and tantalum-bearing minerals. However, eastern regions within the DRC, including the Kivu Region, are also facing extreme humanitarian crises, resulting in the designation of conflict minerals. Tantalum occurs in the mineral columbite-tantalite, also known as coltan, and is mined primarily by artisanal miners within the Kivu Region. Tantalum is frequently used in capacitors to store electrical charge for portable electronics. Artisanal miners are typically exploited through their labor, and the coltan from the mines is then transported out of the DRC feeding the illicit economy within the DRC and adjacent countries.

Precise locations where coltan is being mined for tantalum are not well known and locations change regularly, making it difficult to identify where illicit artisanal mining operations are occurring and to trace its movement from the DRC. The project’s objective is to develop a process for identifying coltan artisanal mines and potential future mine sites in the DRC using remote sensing. The proposed research aims to 1) use change detection from satellite imagery to detect likely coltan artisanal mining locations from 2014 to the present, and 2) use multi-spectral remote sensing to further distinguish coltan artisanal mining locations and future mining areas.

Initial change detection analysis of Sentinel-2 satellite images from the European Space Agency was done in the program ENVI. The initial mine assessed, Bisie, covered a wide area and showed visible changes with and without change detection tools. There was visible northward movement of the mine to the north from 2017 to 2018. Data were collected in areas where artisanal mines had been visited by the International Peace Information System (IPIS). IPIS data allowed for verification of change detection from mining instead of deforestation for logging. Future work will expand multispectral band math and observe more sites like those with fewer than 800 miners. Identifying areas with artisanal mining activities can provide a means to track a critical mineral resource and to predict areas of future mining activity.