Evaluation of Soils

I. Introduction

I.1 Forensic Searches for Human Remains The nature of police work is such that sometimes only vague clues are available regarding the location of a clandestine grave (e.g., “in farmer Brown’s bottom field.”). However,oftentimes without information of this type even the best available forensic tools have little hope of finding a grave. A variety of forensic tools can be used to locate clandestine graves. These are more efficient once the general location of a suspected grave site is identified. The forensic methods range from non-invasive techniques to extremely invasive techniques, and include aerial photographic surveys of suspected areas, ground level photographic surveys, magnetometer and metal detectors, dogs trained to search for cadavers, ground penetrating radar, infrared photography, vegetation differential (pioneer plants), and penetro meter. Treatments such as wetting the site and then using ground penetrating radar and/or magnetometer, plowing the siteand looking for color differential or other evidence of disturbances, and finally perform the actual forensic exhumation are also performed [1].