Identificação de pontos de mineração/garimpo nos limites da Bacia do Tapajós, Sudoeste do Estado do Pará

Abstract

The Amazon of Pará presents a rich and obtained natural ore reserve, ideal for exploration on a medium and large scale. However, one-off mineral resources with less ordering complexity also attract illegal ordering activities, mainly mining for precious metals. This activity is attractive to a large part of the population, becoming in some regions an everyday and common activity for society. However, it generates serious environmental liabilities for the fauna and flora, affecting the lives of the surrounding population. Inserted in this context, the Tapajós River Basin is an important Brazilian hydrographic unit, which has a large part of its extension inserted in the southwest of Pará. This region has an intense prospecting activity, supported by the low complexity of removing mineral resources and the inspection logistics of the competent public bodies. In an attempt to overcome these difficulties, the use of remote sensing, geoprocessing and data management techniques have been important tools in the acquisition and processing of data used in the analyzes that show the panorama of the region. With this theme in mind, this work presents a methodology that creates a GIS, based on remote sensing and geoprocessing techniques on the Google Earth Engine platform and data management on the QGIS 3.16.11 software. This GIS geometrically represents prospects of prospecting/mining activity within the limits of the BHRT, associated with information from the database of public institutions that generate socio-environmental issues. The structuring of the mining GIS has 134431 polygons, totaling 29606.3973 hectares, which have the following attributes: the code and name of the municipality; the phase, last event, company name, corporation, substance use and mining process number; and the type of federal territory, the name of the conservation unit, the name and ethnicity of the indigenous territory. These attributes were used to quantify the main and most frequent elements of the GIS, based on an area calculation, thus creating data that enabled the elaboration of an overview of prospecting activity in the region. This panorama showed that such activity is more frequent in the municipalities of Itaituba and Jacareacanga, with gold being the most targeted substance, structured mainly in an area that does not comply with mineral legislation; and with significant presence in Conservation Units and Indigenous Land, more precisely, in the Tapajós Environmental Protection Area and Munduruku Indigenous Territory, respectively.