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Since it is Hungary's second largest river, the River Tisza is important both as a river and because of its active floodplain. The contaminations endanger the aquatic and the related living nature as well as the farming in the active floodplain. The water quality of the river is examined regularly by the competent authority but far less information is available about the active floodplain. More data is necessary in order to estimate the potential danger. In this paper the River Tisza and its tributaries were examined, especially considering the metal accumulation and its relation to the soil characteristics. We started to create the database in 2004 and several tasks were achieved: the metal content of the root zone in the active floodplain (horizontal distribution); the metal content of the upper 1 m zone in the active floodplain (vertical distribution); the general water chemical and isotope analyses and the metal content of the oxbow lakes near the River Tisza; the metal content of the sediments of the oxbow lakes. More than 300 surface soil samples, 18 soil profiles (18 x 50 samples) and 45 oxbow lakes were examined up to now. Cu, Co, Fe, Ni, Mn, Zn contents were determined in every case and As, Cd, Pb determinations were also carried out in reasonable cases. ArcGIS 9.0 was applied in order to create the spatial database and the statistical analyses of the data were carried out with SPSS. In this paper some case studies will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]