Centre for Australian Forensic Soil Science (CAFSS)

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Activities

Some of the activities and successful case investigations undertaken by CAFSS researchers are listed below.

Development of new Approaches and Methods

CAFSS has developed and applied a new systematic approach to discriminate soils using advanced soil morphology (e.g. colour, organic matter, pollen, diatoms), mineralogy, geochemistry (spectroscopy, magnetic susceptibility analyses) and wet chemical techniques. New rapid spectroscopic methods, coupled with chemometrics, are being developed to rapidly screen and compare crime scene samples.

The following selection of criminal and environmental forensic case investigations were completed, and clearly demonstrate how we have successfully used soil properties to both discriminate between and match soils for critical evidence.

Police Crime Scene Work

• Solving a double murder case by identifying the similarities between mineral assemblages in soils on a shovel and also from a quarry. The soils had a common provenance and revealed the location of two buried bodies.
  Soil science solving crimes - Podcast (MP3, 2.2 MB) May 2006
  Soil Science solving crimes - A4 Poster (PDF, 371 kB) May 2006
• Sexual assault and kidnapping cases in which comparisons were made between soil minerals on clothing and a vehicle, with samples from the crime scene.
• Identifying the possible overseas and/or Australian provenance of soil on boots, rakes, shovels and mattocks belonging to suspected terrorists.
• Comparing dinosaur nest soil-like materials from imported samples and samples provided by Australian museums sourced from Henan Province , China .

Environmental Case Investigations

• Identifying the provenance of an industrial dust settling on parked vehicles. The mineralogy of these dusts identified them as coming from a cement works.
• Identifying the locality of stolen ferns from a conservation park.
• Identifying provenance of soil removed from a site containing aboriginal artifacts.

Archaeology and Landmine Case Investigations

• Developed and employed new soil technologies, to assist the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and forensic archaeologists with work on detection of near surface buried targets such as land mines, unexploded ordinance and graves (bones).