Monitoring the environmental hazards and rehabilitation activities of former GDR uranium and lignite mining areas

Intense mining in former GDR, especially for uranium and lignite did damage the environment up to a catastrophic extent and did cause hazards for the population as well as for the ecology. The total extent of the disastrous destroying and pollution of environment became slowly visible after opening up the "wall" in 1989. To get an overview of the hazards and the dimension of devastation remote sensing techniques mere employed. To stop the impact of mining in ecology, human habitat and human health, great efforts are done to renaturalize those areas and to prevent further pollution. The works in the uranium mining areas is the biggest current attempt for rehabilitation of a former mining area in the world. For conducting and monitoring the rehabilitation work and its success, as well as changes in ecology, remote sensing data products and remote sensing services are developed To serve all possible needs in terms of repetition rate, information content and ground resolution a wide variety of airborne and spaceborne sensors (ERS-1/2 SAR, Landsae-TM, IRS-1C PAN/LISS, DPA DAIS etc) as well as additional ground based datasets are applicated.