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Monitoring Artisanal and
Small-Scale Mining at Scale

Building an evidence base for better decisions with Earth observation.

Artisanal and small-scale mining supports the livelihoods of more than 40 million people and remains one of the least consistently monitored forms of mining. This paper examines the regulatory context, the decisions stakeholders actually face, and what effective monitoring requires.

  • How formal, informal and illegal ASM are distinguished

  • The five capabilities effective monitoring depends on

  • How radar and optical data are combined

  • 42 pages, fully referenced, World Bank, UNEP, EITI, OECD, Swissaid

 

What the paper covers

The paper covers ASM from definition through to monitoring requirements. No remote sensing background is assumed.

What ASM is and why it matters globally

The scale, the geography, and why activity supporting 40 million livelihoods stays largely uncharacterized.

How to define ASM and its regulatory context

Four archetypes; formal, informal, illegal, organized illegal extraction and why formalization is a process, not an event.

Decision-making needs across stakeholders

What governments, mining companies and NGOs each need to decide, and why one observation supports three different responses.

What effective monitoring requires

The five capabilities that separate a monitoring system from a set of disconnected site visits.

How Nightshade makes ASM visible at scale

Multi-sensor change detection, the value of radar, and why signal plus context is what produces intelligence.

Advancing ASM monitoring with science-grade data

What daily revisit, 22 spectral bands and calibrated measurement add to change detection over time.

Key figures from the paper

40–45M

people depend on ASM for their livelihoods worldwide.

World Bank

80+

countries report artisanal and small-scale mining activity.

World Bank

$31B

of gold left Africa undeclared in 2022, an estimated 435 tonnes.

Swissaid

37%

of global mercury emissions come from artisanal gold mining.

UNEP

Mining-Data-Analytics-1

Worked examples

IMG ▸ ASM p.31 · River corridor S2 vs S1 spread · 3_99369

“Effective ASM management depends on understanding where mining activity is occurring, how it is changing over time, and how those changes relate to the surrounding context.”

Understanding where activity is concentrated, how it is evolving, and what it means for the decisions stakeholders face requires repeated observation across space and time — along with the context to interpret it.

Chapters 1, 3 and 5 carry worked examples:
The Sukari district in Egypt, formalization interventions mapped by the World Bank.

Four-year progression along a West African river corridor where cloud hid the activity from optical sensors entirely.

IMG ▸ ASM whitepaper cover (rendered from p.1)

Free download

Download the whitepaper

42 pages, fully referenced and free to download. Covers the regulatory context, the decisions each stakeholder faces, and what effective monitoring requires.