Critical Materials Atlas
Method · expansion from orbit

Where new mining is physically appearing

The trade and production layers tell you where supply is. This one points to where it’s going — satellite-mapped mine footprint expanding across the tropics, 2016–2024. The growth lands squarely on the critical-material frontier: Indonesia’s nickel, the lithium triangle, the Copperbelt.

Where mining is physically growing, 2016–2024 — a forward-looking new-supply signal the trade and USGS layers can’t see.
Source, and its hard limits

Source: Sepin, Vashold & Kuschnig (2025, Nature Sustainability) — an annual panel of machine-learning-segmented mine polygons (Sentinel-2, 87.7% validation accuracy) with a year and country on every polygon, so mapped mine area per country per year falls straight out.

Hard limits: tropics only (no China, Australia, Canada or temperate belt — not a global total); all-commodity (no per-mineral label, so expansion in single-commodity regions is indicative, not attributed); area is mapped surface footprint, not tonnage; and 2024 is under-mapped (it dips below 2023), so 2023 is the robust recent endpoint. Computed by build_mining_expansion.py.

Total tropical mapped mine area, 2016–2024
Fastest-expanding tropical mining countries (km² added, 2016→2024)

The expanding critical-material hubs

Tropical countries with the most mine-footprint growth, and the critical materials they’re known for. “CM” = materials for which the country holds ≥10% of world mine production in the atlas.

Country2016 km²2024 km²growthcritical materials / note

Sepin et al. 2025, Zenodo (precise polygon set) → mining_expansion.json. Tropical belt only; all-commodity footprint; ML-segmented (87.7% accuracy). Pairs with the snapshot on the satellite footprint page.