Targeting rare earth element bearing mine tailings on Bangka Island, Indonesia, with Sentinel-2 MSI

•Geochemistry shows high Erbium contents in tin mine tailings of Bangka Island, Indonesia.•Reflectance spectra show a 674 nm absorption feature related to this Erbium.•Band math shows that Sentinel-2 MSI satellite imagery contains this feature at band 4.•We can map Erbium absorption feature with a correlation of 0.8 to the field data. A laboratory study on rare earth element bearing mine tailings, collected from Bangka Island, Indonesia, reported a new spectral absorption feature at 674 nm associated with Erbium. The present study aims to evaluate the capability of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 MSI sensors to detect this absorption feature from space. An arithmetic band operation is performed on selected visible and near-infrared spectral bands of a Sentinel-2 image. The results show that Sentinel-2 MSI is capable of detecting the 674 nm Erbium-related absorption feature within the particular environmental setting of the study area.