Australia is the world's leading iron ore producer, leading to pronounced land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes. This study quantified the spatial expansion of iron ore mining and cumulative production from 1986 to 2025, and proposed an Exploitation Intensity Indicator (EII) for Australian mines. Landsat 5 (1986) and Sentinel imagery (2025) were processed to map LULC in the Pilbara region. Results indicate that mining areas expanded from 41.45 km² to approximately 1,100 km² over the study period. Cumulative production data (1966–2025) show that Pilbara produced 13.3 billion tons of iron ore, corresponding to an average exploitation intensity of 12 Mt/km². These findings demonstrate that the EII effectively represents land-use efficiency over mine lifecycles and highlight Australia's exceptionally high production levels relative to the spatial footprint of mining activities.
Santos et al. (Tue,) studied this question.