Strata records what happens on the ground at Europe's critical raw materials Strategic Projects, from a pre-construction satellite baseline through every year of operation, using open Copernicus data and one method for every site.
Europe has designated 93 Strategic Projects inside the Union and 13 in third countries under the Critical Raw Materials Act, and the Commission reported on 9 October 2026 that 25 first-round projects had completed environmental impact assessments and 17 held construction permits (European Commission, IP/26/2113). Once excavation starts, the undisturbed landscape can no longer be measured, and the only record of it usually sits in an impact assessment commissioned by the promoter, written to a site-specific method and rarely repeated after permitting. Strata builds a public, comparable record instead: one satellite baseline per site before construction, and the same indicators recomputed every year afterwards.
The question Strata answers is a social one before it is a technical one. Permitting authorities, lenders, battery makers facing due diligence obligations from 18 August 2027, environmental groups and the residents who live beside a new pit all ask what changed on the ground, and each currently answers it with different evidence of different quality. A shared, independent record lets them disagree about interpretation rather than about the facts.
Every site is monitored inside its own footprint and in three buffers at 500 metres, 2 kilometres and 5 kilometres, using annual composites from the European Union's Copernicus programme.
| Indicator | What it tells you | Main data |
|---|---|---|
| Disturbed footprint | Hectares of excavated or bare ground and how fast it grows | Copernicus Sentinel-2 |
| Buffer vegetation loss | Vegetation lost around the site, including inside Natura 2000 areas | Sentinel-2, ESA WorldCover, Natura 2000 |
| Water and tailings extent | Area of ponds, pit lakes and tailings surfaces through the seasons | Sentinel-2, Sentinel-1, JRC Global Surface Water |
| Ground motion | Subsidence or uplift around pits, waste dumps and tailings dams | European Ground Motion Service |
| Land converted | Which land cover the footprint replaced | ESA WorldCover 2021 |
| Downstream water colour | A turbidity signal in rivers and lakes below the site (experimental) | Sentinel-2 |
Each indicator is published with its error margin, the minimum mappable feature size and the dates of the imagery behind it. The full approach is set out on the method page, and every input, licence and attribution line is listed on the data sources page.
Permitting authorities and Single Points of Contact can compare a project's footprint against its permit without commissioning new survey work. Lenders and development finance institutions get a consistent annual check across a portfolio of projects in different countries. Battery makers, cathode producers and recyclers can screen the extraction and processing sites behind their supply contracts ahead of due diligence obligations. Civil society organisations, journalists and local councils can follow change at a specific site with the same evidence investors see.
Strata is the ground-level companion to the critical minerals flow map: the flow map traces where lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths travel between countries, while Strata shows what extracting and processing them does to land and water at the point of origin. Both follow the Lab's core practice of measuring a technology transition before it happens and again after, rather than relying on the account of those who deliver it.
Strata is in development. The first phase will test the indicator pipeline on six Strategic Project sites selected to cover an extraction site before construction, operating extraction with tailings, a processing or recycling plant and one site outside the European Union, validate the results against published global mining footprint datasets, and refine what is published with the people who would use it. Pilot site pages will appear here as they are completed. Each promoter will be contacted before its site page is first published.
Satellite indicators describe surface change; they do not measure water chemistry, air quality, noise or the social effects of a project, and they cannot establish whether a project complies with its permit. Ten-metre imagery misses small features and early earthworks. Ground motion data from the European Ground Motion Service covers Copernicus Participating States only, so third-country sites carry no ground motion indicator in the first phase. Strata is a starting point for questions, not a verdict.
If you hold a permit file, finance a project, buy from one, or live near one and want a site added or a custom indicator set, get in touch.
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The Lab is an independent research team, not an advocacy organisation. We do not campaign, endorse products, or accept commissions where a finding is expected in advance. Where a partner's own theory of change is what needs testing, that is a legitimate engagement, and the Lab tests it honestly.