For decades, the wounds have emerged in the Peruvian Amazon, where the Inambari River merges with the Madre de Dios River, carving thick straps in the old trees. These almost lunar scars of sterile debris were formed at the hands of a growing company that capitalized the gold that the rivers deposit throughout their flood plains.
A new study Posted in Environmental Research Letters It shows that the spread of this devastation has accelerated and has increasingly affected a unique Amazon ecosystem. PLAS OF TAILS SAVAGUARAS OF DEPTH METERS OF CARBON ACUMED FOR MILENIES AND CONTAIN SOLE SETS OF LIFE Different from the surrounding tropical jungle.
About 15 years ago, “there was mining in peatars, but it was the exception.”
About 15 years ago, Ethan owner First he visited the region of Madre de Dios, where 70% of artisanal gold mining takes place in Peru. The peat bogs are dispersed in small pockets along the huge flood plain of Madre de Dios, which extends to Bolivia, where the confluence of the river with the mamore forms the Madeira and finally empty in the Amazon.
The home of the home, a community ecologist of the Karlsruher Institut Für Technologie of Germany and study co -author, recalled that at that time, “there was mining in bosks, but it was the exception.”
Now, he and his colleagues have discovered that Turba mining is emerging in the region.
To determine how artisanal gold mining (defined as subsistence or small scale and, often, illegal) has affected the bogs along the Madre de Dios River, the team sought decades of satellite images in search of sudden drops in the hatching of the forest that could indicate deforestation. Then, they sought spectral information indicative of mining activity: the accumulation of gravel and sand, for example, and the presence of wells full of water on the forestly wooded land site.
Using a trained automatic learning algorithm to choose pixels that met these criteria, the team reviewed the images from 1985 to 2023. They discovered that more than 11,000 hectares of forest along the river had become mines, and most of the growth took place since mid -2010.
Studies like this “are all evidence of puzzles that say that this is a big problem and is not yet solved.”
The analysis found more than 550 hectares associated with mining activity in bosks. Although that is just a fraction of the total area that has been extracted, the investigation showed that the peat mines have expanded faster than mining in the forest in general in recent years. (Fifty -five percent of the loss of peat bogs occurred in the last 2 years).
Already, unearthing these bosks, it has released between 200,000 and 700,000 metric tons stored under the ground, in addition to the carbon released from the loss of trees and the life of plants above it. If all the mob in the region of Madre de Dios is lost, some 17 million long -term carbon metric tons could be released.
Mining in Amazonian peat bogs “is basically the entire strength of global capitalism about one of the most rich habitats in carbon on earth,” the home said.
The new work continues and expands the story of how gold mining is degrading the Amazon, he said Greg AsnerA conservation ecologist at Arizona State University who has been studying the effects of gold mining on the Peruvian Amazon since the beginning of 2010. For him, studies like this “are all evidence of puzzles that say that this is a big problem and is not yet solved.”
—Syris Valentine (@Shapersyris.bsky.social), Scientific writer
Citation: Valentine, S. (2025), Artisanal Gold Mining is destroying Amazonian basks, EOS, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025o250195. Posted on May 20, 2025.
Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC -nd 3.0
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