Report on the geo-environmental inquiry project, central and eastern Europe

 The Commission on Geological Sciences for Environmental Planning (COGEOENVIRONMENT) of IUGS and UNESCO have initiated a joint project to develop a worldwide data base on earth-science-related environmental problems and to assess which geoscientific information is available locally for prevention, prediction or mitigation of such problems. As a first step, a pilot project on geo-environmental problems and geo-information was launched for central and eastern Europe. In this paper the results of a questionnaire sent to all these partly new countries are presented. Analysis of the results of the questionnaire shows that the most serious and common geo-environmental problems in central and eastern Europe are earthquakes, landslides, soil contamination, groundwater pollution and flooding by rivers. Other geo-environmental problems in this part of Europe and some difficulties experienced during the pilot project are also referred to. Some suggestions for the application of geoscientific knowledge to mitigate such problems are presented at the end of this paper. Received: 25 February 1997 · Accepted: 28 January 1998