Objective:

The Defense Science Board has estimated that there are 1,400 sites suspected of containing unexploded ordnance (UXO) that comprise approximately 10 million acres. Typical sites encompass thousands of acres, with many exceeding 10,000 acres. A comprehensive wide area assessment program can have an immediate impact on the UXO remediation problem. By some estimates, up to 80% of the 10 million acres are, in fact, free of UXO. A technology that can accurately delineate the areas on each site that are and, more importantly, are not contaminated would lead to an immediate reduction by 80% of the area that must be carefully examined and cleaned. The ESTCP Wide Area Assessment (WAA) Program is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of various technologies, either alone or in combination, as tools for WAA at Department of Defense (DoD) sites. The objective of this project is to demonstrate an approach that employs multiple sensors to exploit both the specialized phenomenology of UXO detection and the well-defined characterization tools that detect and classify surface features related to UXO contamination. For the purposes of this project, ordnance related features (ORF) are defined as any surface or shallow subsurface feature that can be used to infer the presence of UXO (e.g., surface UXO, fragments, debris, bombing target structures, berms, craters, access roads, vegetation characteristics) and are derived from various fixed-wing and helicopter airborne sensor data sets.

Technology Description:

The specific technologies to be demonstrated in this project include Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), high-resolution color orthophotography, hyperspectral imagery (HSI), and helicopter magnetometry. The power of using multiple sensors is to leverage all available remotely sensed ORFs to define subsurface UXO densities. This capability, combined with the helicopter magnetometry deployed to detect subsurface UXO items, provides a full suite of tools for WAA. Combinations of these technologies will be demonstrated at Pueblo Precision Bombing Range, Colorado; Kirtland Precision Bombing Ranges, New Mexico; and Borrego Springs Maneuver Area, California. The technologies combine derived ORF information with archival information describing prior military activities and site conditions to generate empirical extensions of "a priori" knowledge of the distribution and character of munitions contamination. The overall performance objective is to delineate UXO-contaminated areas based on the combined data sets.

Expected Benefits:

The expected benefits to DoD from this approach are the ability to delineate target edges, label portions of the site as uncontaminated, and make available information to support enhanced planning and risk assessment. This project provides DoD with rigorous, quantitative tools to characterize the extent of UXO contamination at large sites in a timely and cost-effective manner. Applied as a logical sequential process, these technologies can eliminate lands from the DoD inventory that require no further action. (Anticipated Project Completion - 2007)

Principal Investigator:
Dr. Jack Foley
Sky Research, Inc.
445 Dead Indian Memorial Road
Ashland, OR 97520
Telephone: (978) 458-9807
Fax: (720) 293-9666
E-mail: jack.foley@skyresearch.com

DoD Liaison:
Mr. Hollis Bennett
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
ATTN: CEWES-EE-C
3909 Halls Ferry Road
Vicksburg, MS 39180-6199
Telephone: (601) 634-3924
Fax: (601) 634-2854
E-mail: jay.bennett@erdc.usace.army.mil