Illegal extraction of gold has grown to be a problem in many countries, causing the degradation of the environment. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in tree cover and surface pollution. The development of a mine site has been observed and analysed with images acquired from Landsat and the Sentinel missions. The results of the study showed changes in the state of the environment, strongly suggesting the possibility of ongoing pyrite weathering processes and the transportation of clay materials down watercourses, which can cause not only the further deterioration of the environment but also slow down the natural regeneration of the forest. In addition, research has found disturbing changes in vegetation, showing a loss of tree cover in the Amazon Rainforest as high as 17%. The validity of using remote sensing methods to observe the development of individual mining sites and their characteristics was confirmed.

The Topographic Chart of the Kingdom of Poland (pol. Topograficzna Karta Królestwa Polskiego, commonly referred to as ‘the Quartermaster’s Map’, hereinafter: TKKP) is the first Polish modern topographic map of Poland (1:126,000, 1843). Cartographic historians acclaim its conception by the General Quartermaster of the Polish Army, noting its editorial principles and technical execution as exemplars of the early 19th-century cartographic standards. Today, it stands as a national heritage relic, furnishing invaluable insights into the former Polish Kingdom’s topography. Although extensively utilised in geographical and historical inquiries, the TKKP has yet to undergo a comprehensive geomatic investigation and publication as spatial data services. Primarily, this delay stems from the challenges of mosaicking and georeferencing its 60 constituent sheets, owing to the uncertain mathematical framework and irregular sheet cuts. In 2023, the authors embarked on rectifying this by creating a unified TKKP mosaic and georeferencing the map to contemporary reference data benchmarks. This endeavour involved scrutinising the map’s mathematical accuracy and verifying prior findings. The resultant product is accessible via the ‘Maps with the Past’ platform, developed by the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences The dissemination of raster data services adhering to OGC standards such as WMTS (Web Map Tile Service), ECW (Enhanced Compression Wavelet), and COG (Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF) facilitates the swift and seamless integration of the generated data into web and GIS tools. The digital edition of the TKKP emerges as a pivotal resource for investigations spanning natural and anthropogenic environmental transformations, sustainable development, and cultural heritage studies.

The aim of the author is to present the methodology of reconstruction of the Old-Polish transport network as exemplified by the historic Lublin Voivodship. The author discusses the research method and procedure of reconstructing the road routes and locations of transport facilities on the basis of text sources and old maps of varied content and geometric accuracy. The adopted methodology uses GIS tools to analyse and verify data from both cartographic and descriptive sources. The analysis is based on the retrogressive approach, as most of the cartographically reliable sources come from the early 19th century. The presented research procedure consists of three stages: preparation and processing of source material, registration of source information, and finally, its harmonization. The research procedure consists of two main steps: 1) identification (initial identification of the object and verification of its existence); 2) geometrisation (determination of geometrical parameters of the object, followed by their verification, and confirmation of the object’s course or location in the spatial database).

The subject of the article is reconstructing the routes of postal roads within the borders of the Lublin Voivodeship in the second half of the 18th century. The author has attempted to reconstruct the routes of postal roads, using the retrogression method and a cartographic research method with the use of GIS tools. For this purpose, manuscript cartographic and descriptive sources from the late 18th and 19th centuries were used. Cartographic material from the end of the 18th century in connection with descriptive sources constituted the basis for determining the existence of a postal connection. However, maps from the beginning of the 19th century constituted the basis for the reconstruction of the routes of postal roads. The obtained results allowed for the determination of the role of the Lublin Voivodeship in the old Polish communication system. The research has made us aware of the need for further in-depth work on communication in the pre--partition era (before 1795).

In the era of interdisciplinary research supported by IT solutions, a special role is played by digital source repositories. The digital turn has contributed to their considerable development, and the application of new technologies has largely changed the current methods of research work. This facilitates pooling and structuring dispersed collections e.g. as part of thematic repositories, which collect and share thematically related resources. Metadata, which allow effective searching and identification of resources, are an important element of their function. The objective of the article is to present a procedure for the development of metadata aimed at creation of a thematic database of dispersed sources remaining after the Paris Peace Conference ending World War I. Based on the metadata development procedure, the author discusses the diagnosed problems associated with e.g. the specificity of the analyzed sources.

One of the main priorities of emergency services is to minimize the response time to calls. In the process of proper allocation of emergency vehicles, maps of emergency vehicle accessibility are found to be helpful. These maps represent areas within which emergency services can reach the specified location within a certain time. Calculating travel times requires taking into account the rapidly changing current road conditions. This paper presents a method for dynamically generating maps of emergency vehicle accessibility, considering network models and irregular computational grids.