Project Metadata

The Materials Profiling Section of National Services and Research at the RCMP has undertaken a project to chemically characterize soil, water, pollen and hair in cities across Canada for forensic applications.

The goals of the soil portion of the project are:

•  to develop sampling and preparation methodologies to characterize soil by micro-analytical techniques;
•  to provide a regional geochemical baseline of surface soil from cities across Canada
•  to create a geochemical database to be used with a GIS to link other forensic material of interest (e.g. water, hair)
•  to identify areas of interest for higher density sampling

The work was presented at The 3^rd International Conference on Criminal and Environmental Soil Forensics, Long Beach, California in November 2010.

The project was funded by the Geological Survey of Canada through its Targeted Geoscience Initiative 3 (TGI-3) and Canadian Mining Industry Research Organization (CAMIRO) Project 04E01.