Jack Orebaugh, a forensic anthropology major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a big heart for families with missing loved ones.
When someone disappears in an area of dense vegetation, search and recovery efforts can be difficult, especially when a missing person’s last location is unknown. Recognizing the agony of not knowing what happened to a family or friend, Orebaugh decided to use his internship at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to find better ways to search for lost and deceased people using cameras and drones.
Orebaugh and ORNL’s Autonomous Systems team mapped UT’s Anthropology Research Facility, a globally recognized body farm for forensic learning and research, to detect nitrogen uptake in plants. Using multispectral cameras on drones, the team took hundreds of photos over the facility. They then used Pix4D software to stitch the photos together into a large map. The software allows Orebaugh to see areas where plants are healthy compared to areas that have less lush or no plants.
“Plants are storytellers about their environment. They are stationary and become sensors of what’s happening around them,” Orebaugh said.
During decomposition, nitrogen is released into the soil, giving plants access to this extra nutrient, Orebaugh said. “Healthy plants have a rich green color. My research is looking into using multispectral cameras and other sensors to detect very healthy plants from the air. The current hypothesis is nitrogen will enhance the plants and show up distinctly on a map that may indicate decomposition.”
Read full story here: Storytelling plants may help find human remains
Wired did a similar story in 2020: Could a Tree Help Find a Decaying Corpse Nearby?
Learn more about Drone Forensics by taking the certified Oxygen Forensics Drone Analysis training from H-11 Digital Forensics. Mention this Post and receive a $300 credit towards training from H-11.