Samples collected from eight mineral extracting and processing sites, representing commodities of different origin and in different environments (lignite, bituminous coal, porphyry copper and gold extraction mines, copper flotation, metallurgic waste dump), were analyzed in the laboratory for: mineralogy on thin sections, X ray diffraction (XRD), gamma spectrometry, density and spectral reflectance measurements. In sample locations, estimated ground reflectance spectra were extracted from Landsat-TM images, in order to verify the OH-FeOx anomalies, obtained by processing the satellite images with a methodology previously developed for mapping mining wastes at regional scale. The processed satellite images highlighted, by means of the extent and type of OH-FeOx anomalies, the area coverage of the deposited mined material and pointed out the modifications in time. Diagnostic spectral features given by iron ferric/ferrous ions, OH-metal and/or molecular water stay at the basis of the remote sensing OH-FeOx anomalies and the minerals which they indicated, were confirmed either by the microscopic observations on thin sections, or XRD, or both. A differentiation of the sites was performed by statistically analyzing the remote sensing anomalies and comparing with the results of the microscopic analyses and XRD.