orecastorecast answers a simple question: what's actually beneath a given place? We bring together open, official geo-data and scientific databases into one clear answer, for the whole of Europe.
One thing matters to us above all: we keep what is genuinely documented apart from what the geology only makes plausible. You won't find invented numbers or percentages here.
Where the data comes from
There are no measurements of our own behind the map, only sources you can look up. The mineral records come from the Mineral Resources Data System of the United States Geological Survey and from the maps of national geological surveys, among them the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources. Fossils come from the Paleobiology Database and GBIF, caves and old mining from OpenStreetMap. Every point on the map carries its origin with it, and where a source was not free to use, we left it out rather than quietly folding it in.
What documented means, and what plausible means
The distinction sounds pedantic, but it is the heart of the whole thing. Documented means somebody found something here and wrote it down, with a place and a date. Plausible means the rock at this spot is of a kind in which such a thing can occur. One is a finding, the other is an expectation. Plenty of treasure maps online blend the two, because it makes the map look fuller. We keep them apart, even where that leaves the map looking empty.
What orecast cannot do
The map does not tell you where to dig. It tells you what is known. Whether you may search a spot at all depends on the landowner, on nature protection and on heritage law, and in Germany that varies from state to state. Old adits can kill you, and former battlefields still hold live ordnance. orecast flags such points, but it replaces neither a permit nor common sense.
Who this is for
The typical user is not someone with a shovel and gold fever, but someone who wants to know why the landscape outside the door looks the way it does. Why one valley has a village called Silberbach and the next holds no trace of mining. Why the stones in one field are rounded and angular in another. Collectors find the documented sites nearby, walkers see which geosites lie along the route, and the merely curious get the deep history of their own address told back to them.
Give it a try and see what lies beneath your place.