The southern Attiki peninsula is a very interesting area from an
environmental point of view. The port and the city of Lavrio is situated at
the east coast of the peninsula with about 10 000 inhabitants and there are
also a few villages in the vicinity. The south-eastern part of the peninsula
hosts the famous Lavrio mines which exploited the silver bearing
orebodies of the area for more than 25 centuries. As a result, soils around
the city of Lavrio are polluted with high heavy metal loads. The area is
also of archaeological interest, as there are well preserved remnants of
ancient mining and processing plants and archaeological sites. Soil samples collected from an area of approximately 120 km2 around
Lavrio were analysed for their metal contents and the spatial distribution
of the concentrations of ten selected elements were estimated from these
data sets. The spatial data analysis and transformation capabilities of
Geographic Information Systems, combined with extensive mining and
geological data, helped the authors to identify the extent and causes of
metal pollution around Lavrio.