Watersheds are planning units of the territory, which allow adequate management of water resources. In Colombia there are several highly important tributaries, such as the Cauca river, located between the western and central mountain ranges, whose basin includes municipalities in the departments of Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Quindío, Risaralda, Caldas, Antioquia and Bolívar. This area is recognized for its high production of gold, Antioquia being one of the departments with the highest annual rate of extraction of this, however, the illegal extraction of gold is a problem that has been increasing and due to the influence of groups The armed forces and the geographical conditions of the territory that determine government control have facilitated their growth and expansion throughout the basin. The remote sensing technique serves to make a pan of these difficult-to-access territories knowing the composition of the soil, its coverage or the state of the area, this in turn allows to establish the effects on the environment and the communities that live there, being the objective of this work to provide support for the development of an environmental diagnosis around the effects caused by the illegal extraction of gold that is identified in the Cauca river basin.