Determining the suitability of gold bulking villages articulated to the Lepanto gold district of Northwestern Luzon with the aid of WorldView2 satellite imagery

This paper presents a suitability model of bulking villages in the Lepanto gold district using the weighted overlay technique. An as an alternative to more environment-deterministic modelling in GIS, an attempt is made to use a hybrid of both environmental variables with social variables. The resulting raster model was then overlain on image enhanced WorldView2 scenes to remote sense high probability sites for bulking villages. Two known sites were also tested if their locations conformed to the gold bulking model. Danac site was more conducive to accommodate transshipment of bulkier loads while the Apaya site was more conducive to spotting ship arrivals on the coast. The variation is arguably connected to the latitude of agency of the upland gold miners vis a vis the lowland coastal polities.