Exposure assessment of a burning ground for chemical ammunition on the Great War battlefields of Verdun

Could shelling in the First World War have increased copper concentrations in the soil around Ypres?

“…They found unusually large concentrations of Cu and lead (Pb), and also increased amounts of arsenic, which was used in chemical warfare to produce nerve gasses. More recently, they did a similar study near Verdun, France, and reached similar conclusions (Bausinger et al, 2007). Pirc & Budkovicˇ(1996) reported that concentrations of Cu and Pb, among other elements, were more or less anomalously large in soils along the Italian-Slovenian front of the war.…”

Microbial community response to environmental changes in a technosol historically contaminated by the burning of chemical ammunitions

“…At the end of the First World War (1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918) large quantities of unfired ammunitions remained along the former front line. These weapons were either disassembled to allow recycling of reusable materials (metals and chemical compounds), destroyed by open detonation or, for the most dangerous chemical weapons, dumped at sea (Edwards and Beldowski, 2016) or destroyed by burning (Bausinger and Press, 2005;Bausinger et al, 2007).…”

How much did the soldiers dig? A quantification of WW1 remains in Argonne, France

“…In a scientific context fostering the development of an unknown archaeological heritage (Desfossés, Jacques, & Prilaux, ; Robertshaw & Kenyon, ; Saunders, ; Van Hollebeeke, Stichelbaut, & Bourgeois, ), the use of lidar allows the measurement of both the extent and integrity of nonleveled battlefields at the landscape scale (Hesse, , ; Mlekuz, ). Several studies have simultaneously provided robust archaeological (Gheyle et al., ; Saey, Stichelbaut, Bourgeois, Van Eetvelde, & Van Meirvenne, ; Stichelbaut et al., ) and environmental models (Bausinger, Bonnaire, & Preuß, ; Hupy & Kœlher, ; Hupy & Schaetzl, ), highlighting the extreme impact of 20th century global conflicts on the landscape (Schnitzler, Landolt, Jacquemot, Legendre, & Laparra, ), in particular that of the Western Front in the WW1, where millions of soldiers lived, fought, and were compressed along a front line extending over 700 km.…”