Project Description

Meeting military readiness, mission capability, and battlefield preparation calls for large training areas in landscapes representative of the in-theater field environment. Access to safe and realistic training necessitates training area sustainability through land and cultural resource management, as well as the ability to predict and avoid areas sensitive to disturbance.

Cost-effective, system-wide methodologies based on integrated scientific approaches for rapid site assessment can minimize disruptions to training, while fulfilling management strategies.

LanDPro enhances and integrates recently completed soil, geomorphic, and hydrogeologic projects for ITAM and other DoD projects, as well as improves the robustness and universality of existing tools in support of land stewardship on DoD installations. The land manager will be able to use these tools to selectively assess and target sites for restoration and resource management. Additionally, expedited cultural resource inventories for DoD expansion areas or infrastructure modifications will be possible through enhancement of existing prototypes for predictive archaeological models.

Related Research Sponsored in part by the Department of Defense

Bullard, T., McDonald, E., and Baker, S. 2009. Integration of new methods in soils and geomorphology applied to cultural resources management on military lands. Workshop Report, sponsored by: Army Research Office, NAVFAC SW, Desert Research Institute, Oct. 20-22, 2008, San Diego, CA.

McDonald, E.V., and Bullard, T.F. 2008. Geomorphic response to extreme change in a Mediterranean ecosystem: Holocene alluvial history of Santa Catalina Island, California, USA. European Geosciences Union, Geophysical Research Abstracts 10, EGU2008-A-10709.

McDonald, E., Bullard, T., Britt, T., and Ruiz, M. 2004. Development of an archaeological predictive model for management of military lands: identification of geological variables in desert terrain. In: D.R. Caldwell, J. Ehlen, and R.S. Harmon, Eds., Studies in Military Geology. Kluwer Academic, Boston, p. 259-270.

Predictive models

GIS-based archaeology predictive models incorporate a wide variety of spatial and environmental data, including site descriptions and classification, geology, geomorphology, soils, and hydrogeological data to produce favorability models for both site location and site preservation, and as decision making tools to help strategize and expedite cultural resource inventories.  LanDPro is working with cultural resources manages to incorporate soil-geomorphology into developing predictive models to enhance model capability strength and effectiveness.

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