POSTPONED:Confirmation of Candidature - Exploring Mining Impacts on Environment and Society using Remote Sensing on Cloud Computing Platform: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis

Coal mines in Australia have consistently turned once vibrant settlements into ghost towns, degrading the land and environment, and inducing displacement and loss of livelihood assets. These have worsened the quality of life of affected communities resulting in depravation and degradation of the environment and ecosystem. In order proactively monitor the impacts of the numerous surface mining activities springing up on host communities in recent years due to mining boom, this study used google earth engine (GEE) cloud computing to analyse the land use and land cover changes and their social impacts. Basing our study on Acland Mining Community as our study area, historical Landsat data were classified using enhanced processing stacked ensemble technique which combined different machine learning algorithms. The study for the first time combined unsupervised and supervised classifiers to produce a high accuracy classification of land use and landcover changes within the study area between the years 2000 to 2023. The study further analysed how mining has impacted the livelihood of host community and the extent of deprivation and displacement caused as a result over the past 2 decades.

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