Gold mining generates major environmental impacts like landscape degradation, accumulation of waste rock dumps, and water contamination by suspended solids. Russia ranks third in the
world in gold production, but the impact of gold mining has not been previously estimated for its
vast northeastern part. This study provides a detailed overview of land-cover changes associated
with gold mining in the Magadan region (northeast Russia) in the 21st century, where alluvial gold
production has increased by a third in the last 20 years. A long-term series of Landsat and Sentinel-2
images obtained in July and August are used to compile two datasets of mining-impacted areas with
totally removed vegetation for 2000–2002 and 2022. We calculated the NDVI difference and then
discriminated mining-related vegetation losses from other bare areas, using additional data like the
classification of landforms based on the digital surface model and the data on mining allotments.
The total area of gold-mining sites was estimated as 41,206 ha in 2000–2002 and 72,602 ha in 2022,
with an increase of 26,031 ha over the past 4–6 years. Moreover, this is a lower-boundary estimate,
without taking into account man-made reservoirs and historical mines recovered by vegetation. The
spatial distribution of mining sites has not changed significantly over the past two decades and
has a maximum in the western part of the region. We found that the floodplains of the Berelekh
and Debin Rivers (large tributaries of the Kolyma River) are most heavily impacted by gold mining
with a removed vegetation canopy occupying 16.0% and 11.2% of their area. Along with the land
degradation assessment, we found that 19,900 ha of historical gold-mining sites in the Berelekh River
basin are recovered by vegetation, which is comparable in size to the areas impacted by mining over
the past 20 years.