From the 2000s onwards, gold mines (in the technical environment called Mineração Artesanal and Small Gold Scale - MAPEO) have grown continuously in Brazil and in the world mainly due to the high price of metal. As a result, the activity's capacity to negatively impact the environment was also boosted by opening mining fronts in areas of primary forests, disordered excavations and pollution and degradation of soil and water courses. This phenomenon seems to have had resonance in the North of Mato Grosso, renewing the socio-economic importance of this modality and the concern about its effects on the environment at the regional level. This implies the need for continuous monitoring and control of the progress of mining projects in the geographic space. Our study aimed to collect and compile data on the occurrence of gold mines, in the period from 2009 to 2018 in northern Mato Grosso, comprising 15 municipalities, among which Peixoto de Azevedo, Novo Mundo, Nova Bandeirantes, Apiacás and Alta Floresta. The mapping of the activity was carried out through satellite images, resulting in the identification of eight gold-mining zones, the finding of an overall growth of 232% in the area explored. The expansion of activity was related to an increase of 166% in the degradation of watercourses and 191% in the permanent preservation areas attached to them, with 94% of these areas not being recovered after three years of abandonment. There was an advance of mineral mining fronts towards protected areas in the period from 2016 to 2018, threatening the Cristalino State Park in the municipality of Novo Mundo, the Kaiabi Indigenous Land in Apiacás and the Juruena National Park in Nova Bandeirantes, this place where the actual invasion occurred. This is the first time-space study to approach MAPEO in Northern Mato Grosso in an integrated manner. The results prove that gold mines have grown in the last eleven years with a tendency to increase their importance in times of rising gold prices. Its characteristic as an escape valve from the labor market also indicates that moments of economic crisis and unemployment favor the influx of labor from other activities contributing to its expansion. In the current conjuncture of the economic crisis due to the pandemic, all these factors are present, foreshadowing the worsening of the environmental damage in the gold mining areas.