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license: cc-by-sa-4.0
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## SmallMinesDS
The gradual expansion of unregularized artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) fuels environmental degradation and poses risk to miners and mining communities. To support reclamation initiatives and pave the way for understudying the impacts of mining, we present SmallMinesDS, a benchmark dataset for mapping artisanal small-scale gold mining from multi-sensor satellite images. The initial version of the dataset covers five districts in Southwestern Ghana in two time periods. 
The first version of SmallMinesDS covers five administrative districts in Southwestern Ghana with a ground area of 3236km2. 
SmallMinesDS includes satellite images from optical and radar sensors in the dry season (January) for two years (2016 and 2022). 
The area covered is ecologically diverse, hosting rich biodiversity and serving as a hub for multiple land-use activities, 
including crop cultivation, forestry, industrial and small-scale gold mining. 
This multifaceted landscape underscores the importance of reliable, mapping and monitoring ASGM activities in the area.


## Folder Structure of SmallMinesDS
**YEAR1**
- IMAGE
- MASK


**YEAR2**
- IMAGE
- MASK


## Naming Convention
Image : IMG_XXXX_YYYY.tif
Mask  : MASK_XXXX_YYYY.tif

XXXX = a 4 digit unique identifier for each patch
YYYY = year of satellite data acquisition

NB: All images are acquired in the month of January (dry season)


## Input Data Description
SmallMines contains 13 bands for each image and a binary label.
The order of the bands for the images is as follows:

- Index 0-9   ==> Sentinel-2 L2A [blue, green, red, red edge 1, red edge2, red edge 3, near infrared, red edge 4, swir1, swir2]
- Index 10-11 ==> Sentinel-1 RTC + speckle filtered [vv, vh]
- Index 12    ==> Copernicus DEM [dem]


Each patch has an input shape of ```13 x 128 x 128``` and a corresponding mask of ```1 x 128 x 128```