[en] Since 1981, the Bavarian State Office for Environmental Protection has been operating a biomonitoring network of epiphytic mosses Hypnum cupressiforme which is located on a regular grid with distances 16 km. About 300 moss specimens are collected yearly (since 1991 every second year) at the end of the vegetation period, and the content of trace metals in the dry substance is measured. In order to gain insight on main sources of metal pollution in Bavaria, correlation patterns between the metals Ti, V, Cr, As, Cd, Sb, Hg, and Ph were analyzed. The year-specific correlation coefficients for each pair of metals reveal the following behavior consistently over years: Within each pair out of the metals Ti, V, Cr, and As there is a strong and consistent linear relationship; Hg and Cd do not correlate with any other metal; Pb and Sb show moderate correlations to the rest of the metals except Hg and Cd. Higher-dimensional correlation patterns were studied by means of principal component analysis with varimax rotation. Results are presented for the 1984 and 1995 data with the Hg variable excluded, results from the rest of the years were similar. At least 82% of the variance could be explained by three principal components. The following three factors were extracted by varimax rotation from both data sets: one factor with similar loadings for Ti, V, Cr, and As; one factor loading highly on both Sb and Pb; one factor representing mainly Cd. The spatial distribution of the first factor integrates the common gradient with high values in the North-East of Bavaria, indicating that industrial and domestic lignite combustion in the adjacent regions is an important source of those metals. (author)