It is not a promising area for exploration, but is ideal for using remote sensing to investigate contamination from old mines in numerous small places. Roman contamination is especially interesting since it is already covered by soil and difficult to map. The Eastern Erzgebirge, on the border between Germany and the Czech Republic, is one of the most extensively mined areas in Europe. Deposits of tin, tungsten, uranium, gold, silver and zinc have been exploited for more than 1,000 years. The region is characterised by a high population density and large forests.
Environmental damage caused by mining and related heavy industry is widespread and can be severe.
The first step was to collect available information for each of the three areas and integrate it in the GIS database. For the Erzgebirge, for example, there were 85 'layers' of information, including 30 sets of remote sensing data. Information included such things as satellite images and radar maps, aerial photographs, soil geochemistry, gravity surveys, aeromagnetic data, geological maps, topographical maps, sources of pollution, meteorological records, and so on. Similar databases were compiled for the two Spanish areas. New surveys were undertaken in some areas where the need arose.