The Alaska Center for Conservation Science (ACCS) at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), in partnership with the Northwest Boreal Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NWB LCC), embarked on a project to map and quantify the human footprint across interior Alaska and northwestern Canada. The goal was to build a seamless dataset that spanned international boundaries by stitching information from state, provincial and territorial entities in order to represent landscape intactness in the boreal ecosystem.

Significant effort was expended on developing a comprehensive dataset defining mining’s footprint across the region. Historically, mines have been depicted by point locations which do not convey their relative sizes or mining activity is represented by claims polygons which overestimate their actual footprints and have a recency bias. Using 2.5 meter ortho-imagery and 5 meter digital elevation data, ACCS embarked on project to digitize visible surface disturbance related to historic and current mining. Nearly 2000 source point locations were evaluated from the US Geologic Survey, British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines, and the Yukon Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources.

The mining footprint dataset includes over 650 digitized polygons totaling 1200 square kilometers with a mean size of 1.8 sq kms. The footprints have been summarized at the watershed (USGS HUC10 – mean area 688 sq kms) scale across Alaska and at the coarse scale, sub-sub drainage unit (mean area 16,000 sq kms) within Canada. This dataset could help inform decisions regarding natural resource monitoring, identifying potential mitigation/restoration sites, and for conservation planning at watershed scales.