MONITORING THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION CAUSED BY TIN 
MINING ACTIVITIES, IN BARKIN LADI AREA OF PLATEAU STATE OF 
NIGERIA, USING SATELLITE IMAGERIES 
Nkem Ononiwu 
M. Ogunjobi 
National Water Resources Institute 
Computer Centre 
Mando Road, Pmb 2309 
Kaduna, Nigeria 
ISPRS Commission VII / Working Group 7 
ABSTRACT 
Barkin Ladi is one of the Local Government Areas on the terribly cissected Plateau of Nigeria. The sahel 
savannah region is endowed with tin ore mineral. The tin mining here started in 19th century. Today, due 
to this surface mining, much of the landscape has been destroyed with large agricultural land lost to the 
mining activities. In 1986 a Landsat false colour composite with resolution of 78 m at 1:250.000 scale 
was used to estimate area of land surface destroyed by the tin mining activities. It was found out that in 
zone A approximately 6303 Ha of the land area has been wasted. This represented 3.6% and i zone B 
7115.5 Ha of land is wasted and this represents 20.6%. Averag: land wasted is 17.1%. In order to 
monitor the expansion of this land degradation due to the continuous mining activities n this area, a 
Landsat TM false colour composite was procured in 1990. Changes that have taken place since then are 
hereby presented and discussed in this paper. In addition, suggestions are also made on how to recover 
this fast diminishing agricultural land and restore the stability of the ecosystem in this environment. 
104