Preface -- SECTION I: Criminal soil forensics -- Soil traces: forensic examinations and legal context -- Chapter 1: Forensic palynology: Checking value of pollen analysis as a tool to identify crime scene in semiarid environments -- Chapter 2: Forensic Palynology: How pollen in dry grass can link to a crime scene -- Chapter 3: Geological analysis of soil and anthropogenic material. Three case studies -- Chapter 4: Forensic Soil Analysis: case study of looting at a Roman-Visigothic burial vault -- Chapter 5: Soil comparisons using small soil traces, a case report -- Chapter 6: Forensic comparison of soil samples -- Chapter 7: Reinstating soil examination as a trace evidence sub-discipline -- Chapter 8: Methodology of Forensic Soil Examination in Russia and a View on the World Standardization Process -- SECTION II: Environmental soil forensics -- Forensic tools for spatial and chemical analysis -- Chapter 9: Geographical Information Systems - a working example in the Brazilian Federal Police for fighting environmental crime -- Chapter 10: Forensic characterization of gasoline releases impacting the environment -- Chapter 11: A general overview of pesticides in soil: Requirement of sensitive and current residue analysis methods -- SECTION III: Searches and burial sites -- A. Searches: co-operation, strategies and techniques -- Chapter 12: A study of pH as an influencing factor in the survival of human remains at sites investigated by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains -- Chapter 13: Interdisciplinary approaches to the search and location of buried bodies: a United Kingdom context -- Chapter 14: Forensic Geophysics: How the GPR technique can help with forensic investigations -- Chapter 15: Filter paper adsorption and ninhydrin reagent as presumptive test for gravesoil -- B. Decomposition and degradation processes -- Chapter 16: Changes in soil microbial activity following cadaver decomposition during spring and summer months in southern Ontario -- Chapter 17: Soil fauna and their effects on decomposition within coniferous and deciduous tree soil samples -- Chapter 18: Analysis of decomposition fluid collected from carcasses decomposing in the presence and absence of insects -- Chapter 19: Forensic analysis of volatile compounds from decomposed remains in a soil environment -- Chapter 20: GC�GC-TOFMS, the Swiss knife for VOC mixtures analysis in soil forensic investigations -- Chapter 21: An investigation of the degradation of polymeric grave goods in soil environments.

This book follows from the 6th triennial conference of the European Academy of Forensic Sciences (EAFS) in The Hague, where forensic practitioners and academic researchers met to present and discuss their work in soil forensics and to interact with the larger forensic community. Soils play a role in environmental forensics, where criminal and liable soil pollution is studied, and in criminal forensics, where soils are important as a source of trace evidence and as a place where human remains are buried and decay. At the conference multiple sessions were devoted to all of these topics. The contributions to this book are derived from these sessions and likewise show the extent and complex nature of this developing forensic expertise and its value for law enforcement. In soil forensics a multitude of scientific specializations, expertise and skills interplay: soil science, mineralogy, geology, geophysics, botany, ecology, palynology, archaeology, chemistry, spatial analysis, sampling and (geo)statistics - all of these and even more are relevant. Throughout this book examples are given of methodologies that are based on these sciences and used in soil forensics, such as GPR, GIS, examinations of minerals, pollen, microbial DNA, inorganic and organic materials, including material of anthropogenic origin, the use of databases, search-strategies for missing people and the study of decomposition processes in interaction with the environmental conditions of the burial site. Moreover the practice of soil forensics is depicted in its legal context, emphasizing the need for evidence to be suitable for court proceedings and the importance of co-operation, not only between scientists of different specializations but also between scientists and law enforcers, the latter beginning even before the examination of a crime scene. This book shows the broad field of soil forensics, emerging and solidifying in many countries all over the world, differing in some respects along with their legal systems, but ultimately sharing common grounds.