Detecting fugitive energetic pollutants has the dual benefit of eliminating human exposures from polluted waters and soil as well as allowing potential detection of unexploded ordinance and landmines. Forgotten landmines endanger the lives of innocent civilians and military personnel, alike. Over time, landmines exposed to soil moisture and rain age and eventually leach out their explosive contents into surrounding soil. As energetic xenobiotic pollutants transfer into plant tissues, they can cause vegetative stress detectable with hyperspectral imaging techniques. Previous phytoforensic methods of direct tissue concentrations have been developed to demonstrate uptake and related to subsurface concentrations. Hyperspectral imagery (HSI) is quickly acquired, processed, and analyzed and may be useful in the search for forgotten landmines and pollutants by flying hyperspectral sensors to pinpoint plant stress and direct ground sampling efforts. To demonstrate applicability a greenhouse study was implemented using plant species native to and grown in Cambodia, a country affected by high numbers of remnant landmines that have rendered thousands of acres of land effectively useless. Maize, soybean, bamboo, and teak are all found in Cambodia and were chosen because of either their natural distribution, or agronomic value in the region. Willow and poplar species were selected due to extensive use in the past in explosives uptake studies. These species were exposed to 0, 10, 50, 100, 250 mg kg-1 of RDX, TNT, and HMX to simulate in situ conditions of vegetation exposed to energetics from leaking landmines and testing sites. Species were also grown under drought conditions to make comparisons between anthropogenic and natural stress. Plants were imaged weekly with a hyperspectral camera to calculate reflectance indices that indicate plant health status. Responses of monocot and dicot species to various chemicals, concentrations, and drought were quantified to determine the efficacy of plants as bio-sentinels to assess fugitive explosives compounds

Phytoforensic methods from the air: Hyperspectral Image (HSI) comparison of plant responses to energetics exposure and drought stress

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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