Background Every ve years since 1990, the European Heavy Metals in Mosses Survey provided data on atmospheric heavy metal bioaccumulations in mosses throughout Europe at a high spatial resolution. The moss data show the e ectiveness of air quality control policies: for Germany the metal bioaccumulations decreased between 1990 and 2000, whilst they increased from 2000 to 2005. This investigation is intended to show how the moss data could be used to map atmospheric depositions of Cd and Pb, which later on might serve for the calculation of Critical Loads Exceedances. In addition, we compared how much heavy metal concentrations in mosses in Germany deviate from background data observed in Greenland.Methods Mapping heavy metals with a high spatial resolution for the German territory was conducted according to the following methodology: EMEP deposition maps (50 km by 50 km spatial resolution) were intersected within a GIS with Kriging maps on Cd and Pb accumulations in mosses (EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme) is a scienti cally based and politically driven programme under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution for international co-operation to solve transboundary air pollution problems). Subsequently, the statistical relations between the EMEP modelled depositions and the bioaccumulations in mosses were quanti ed by using regression analysis. The regression functions were used to transform the moss concentration maps into deposition maps. The resulting maps on Cd and Pb depositions have a spatial resolution of 5 km by 5 km and were added to the respective map on the residuals of the regression functions (Regression Kriging). Finally, the territory of Germany was extracted from the European maps on Cd and Pb depositions and the legends were adjusted accordingly in terms of n standard deviations from the German mean value. The concentrations of Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mo, Pb, Sb, Sn, and Zn in the mosses sampled in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005 Results and discussion The regression models corroborate that the Cd concentration in mosses is correlated with the EMEP modelled total Cd deposition across Europe (regression coefficient according to Pearson, r p = 0.67; regression coefficient according to Spearman, r s = 0.69). The coefficient of determination is r 2 = 0.44. The same is true for Pb with r p = 0.76 and r s = 0.77 and r 2 = 0.58. Based on the regression models and the respective residuals, maps on the total deposition of Cd and Pb were calculated for the year 2005. The German mean value of total Cd and Pb deposition was 0.342 g / ha / a (standard deviation 0.08 g / ha / a and 8.6 g / ha / a (standard deviation 2.1 g / ha / a) respectively. The maps depict the spatial patterns of the total Cd and Pb deposition in terms of n standard deviations from the respective German wide mean value. The spatial resolution of the maps is 5 km x 5 km and reflects the mesh size of the moss monitoring net. Even today, the bioaccumulation of several metals in Germany still exceeds the backgr...