Investigation of the application of wavelet transform to Geo-Radar with a case study of forensic geophysics in snow

Geophysical techniques have been successfully used by law enforcement agencies to locate graves and forensic evidences. Nonetheless, more controlled research is needed to better understand the applicability of this technology. Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a non-invasive geophysical method that uses radar pulses to image the subsurface. This method can be used in a variety of media, including rock, soil, ice, fresh water, pavements and structures. Different applications of GPR as a convenient geophysical tool have been studied in near-surface assessments for diverse media and targets. Snow is one of the low-loss medium and relatively suitable for GPR studies. Considering geophysical approaches in such environments, we will deliberate how body of a mountain climber was detected in snow due to avalanche occurrence. This kind of study is part of forensic geophysics. First step in such works is to estimate the position of the buried body by inspecting the place cautiously, which is different than routine works. Important points that assist in such cases are avalanche path, and rocks/hills and obstacles in the way after avalanche incident to mountaineer which react as a trap. Against the mountaineer body’s coverings which are formed by non-conductive materials, the body involves highly conductive textures. This phenomenon along with turbulences in snow layers occurred by the avalanche, increase complexity of these kind of studies. However, for investigation in places without avalanche incident and with more homogenous target, the procedure is simpler and straight forward. Looking at the data of mentioned in the case study, initially processed radargrams have no obvious sign of the buried body. Building a synthetic model based on environment and target properties can provide better vision for processing procedure. Therefore, besides forward modelling, some advanced methods were used. The applied advanced process created remarkable changes in radargrams especially when continuous wavelet transform (CWT) is used. It seems that application of some processing parameters leads to higher amplitudes in radargrams. Eventually, more apparent hyperbola related to the target, were appeared that helped to separate snowy layer from beneath rock. In this direction, excavation a trench and laying a survey inside of it which was a convenient place to conduct data acquisition, was helpful to find probable indications to mountaineer’s body location. At the end, excavations revealed the body of climber at the depth around 1m where substantiated the results achieved from advanced processes and interpreted radargrams. Overall, advanced processing approach along with commonly used processes can reap suitable results for data interpretation.