Large amounts of carbon are stored in soils of the northern circumpolar permafrost region. Highresolution mapping of this soil organic carbon (SOC) is important to better understand and predict local to global scale carbon dynamics. In this thesis, studies from five different areas across the permafrost region indicate a pattern of generally higher SOC storage in Arctic tundra soils compared to...

A lthough landmine clearance employs various techniques, manual demining still accounts for a large part of mine-removal operations. The metal detector is the most common tool used in manual demining. Ground-penetrating radar was studied and tested as a complementary tool to the metal detector, because it can identify buried objects and accelerate operations. As the metal detector and GPR emplo...

A buried pipeline can buckle upwards if there is not enough resistance to movement. Both the uplift resistance (the maximum force per unit length) and the mobilisaion distance (the distance the pipeline has move before the maximum force is reached) are important in design. Tests on pipes in several soils were carried out at 1 g at full scale and in a centrifuge at 10 g and 1/10 scale. A compari...

Some death scene investigations commence without knowledge of the location of the body and/or decomposition site. In these cases, it is necessary to locate the remains or the site where the body decomposed prior to movement. We hypothesized that the burial of a mammalian cadaver will result in the release of ninhydrin reactive nitrogen (NRN) into associated soil and that this reaction might hav...

Plant macrofossils and pollen play complementary roles in paleoecology. Each has its own advantages and shortcomings. Used separately, they provide valuable information about past vegetation. Used together, the two types of data can corroborate or, occasionally, challenge each other, and they can provide more detailed and refined understanding of past vegetation at multiple spatial scales. In t...

Multimodal detection of subsurface targets such as tunnels, pipes, reinforcement bars, and structures has been investigated using both ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and seismic sensors with signal processing techniques to enhance localization capabilities. Both systems have been tested in bi-static configurations but the GPR has been expanded to a multi-static configuration for improved perfor...

We report the rapid acidification of forest soils in the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California. After 30 years, soil to a depth of 25 cm has decreased from a pH (measured in 0.01 M CaCl2) of 4.8 to 3.1. At the 50-cm depth, it has changed from a pH of 4.8 to 4.2. We attribute this rapid change in soil reactivity to very high rates of anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen (N) added to the ...

In the Hudson Bay/James Bay Lowlands, along the coasts of Banks Island, and along the eastern coast of Baffin Island are continuous and extensive sections in Quaternary sediments. These sections are rich in marine fossils, buried peats, and soils and contain a wide variety of glaciagenic sediments together with glacial marine units and littoral deposits. Lake muds are also fairly common. All th...