The Archaeology of Unexploded World War II Bomb Sites in the Koźle Basin, Southern Poland

Waga, Jan Maciej; Szypuła, Bartłomiej; Fajer, Maria

doi:10.1007/s10761-022-00672-5

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…As a result of the effective smoke screens laid over the plants, high drop heights and intense anti-aircraft fire, many of the 39,137 bombs dropped failed to hit their targets, exploding in other areas including forests. The craters preserved there, created by 500-pound demolition bombs, range from 10 to 15 metres in diameter and are often more than 2 m deep; 250-pound bombs resulted in 7–10 m craters, and there are also smaller craters from unexploded ordnance [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. Before the sand mine started to operate in Kotlarnia, the area had been soft and waterlogged due to the fact that the substrate consisted of marginal silts, which were impermeable to water ( Figure 5 ).…”

Section: Study Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic Landforms Derived from LiDAR Data in the Woodlands near Kotlarnia (Koźle Basin, Poland)

Waga

Szypuła

Fajer³

2022

Sensors

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Unlike farmland or urban areas, forests have long been regarded as environments that favour the preservation of valuable geological and historical sites. However, due to invasive forestry methods, the implementation of large investment projects and the development of mining, they are increasingly no longer safe spaces for the relics of human activities recorded in landforms. Data collection, including using LiDAR technology, presents an opportunity to preserve knowledge about these landforms. Through the analysis of shaded images of a 37-hectare woodland area near Kotlarnia, landforms of various ages documenting 21 different human activities were identified, including remnants of reforestation activities, the expansion and modification of hydraulic structures and road infrastructure, charcoal burning and tar distilling, exploitation of mineral resources and military activities. The results of the remote sensing work were verified in the field.

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Section: Study Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic Landforms Derived from LiDAR Data in the Woodlands near Kotlarnia (Koźle Basin, Poland)

Waga

Szypuła

Fajer³

2022

Sensors

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“…However, detecting bomb craters from past conflicts in more recent satellite images can be challenging as the appearance of bomb craters changes over time due to erosion, vegetation growth and human intervention (E. . Historical aerial wartime imagery has been used as an alternative to detect and analyze World War II bomb craters in Europe (Clermont et al, 2019;Kruse et al, 2019;Waga et al, 2022), but its availability is often restricted to small areas. Declassified historical U.S. satellite imagery (USGS EROS Center, 2018), taken during and immediately after the Vietnam War, now presents an opportunity to overcome some of these challenges.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting Vietnam War Bomb Craters in Declassified Historical KH-9 Satellite Imagery

Barthelme,

Darbyshire,

Spracklen

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Thousands of people are injured every year from explosive remnants of war which include unexploded ordnance (UXO) and abandoned ordnance. UXO has negative long-term impacts on livelihoods and ecosystems in contaminated areas. Exact locations of remaining UXO are often unknown as survey and clearance activities can be dangerous, expensive and time-consuming. In Vietnam, Lao PDR and Cambodia, about 20% of the land remains contaminated by UXO from the Vietnam War. Recently declassified historical KH-9 satellite imagery, taken during and immediately after the Vietnam War, now provides an opportunity to map this remaining contamination. KH-9 imagery was acquired and orthorectified for two study areas in Southeast Asia. Bomb craters were manually labeled in a subset of the imagery to train convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for automated crater detection. The CNNs achieved a F1-Score of 0.61 and identified more than 500,000 bomb craters across the two study areas. The detected craters provided more precise information on the impact locations of bombs than target locations available from declassified U.S. bombing records. This could allow for a more precise localization of suspected hazardous areas during non-technical surveys as well as a more fine-grained determination of residual risk of UXO. The method is directly transferable to other areas in Southeast Asia and is cost-effective due to the low cost of the KH-9 imagery and the use of open-source software. The results also show the potential of integrating crater detection into data-driven decision making in mine action across more recent conflicts.

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Detection of past landscape elements in marginal mountain areas—the example of the Western Carpathians

Sobala

2023

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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There has been a growing interest in applying airborne laser scanning (ALS) in studies on past landscapes. This includes in marginal mountain areas; however, the usefulness of using ready-made ALS data has not been assessed quantitatively this type of area. This paper aims to compare the usefulness of different visualisation techniques of ready-made digital elevation model (DEM) to detect landscape elements connected with past human activity in marginal mountain areas in the Western Carpathians. Six different DEM visualisation techniques were compared, and some problems were identified in the detection of landscape elements using ALS data and field mapping. This study illustrates that it is impossible to point out the most useful DEM visualisation technique that could be applied in marginal mountain areas characterised by varied natural conditions. However, the results confirmed the usefulness of negative openness in road detection and positive openness during the detection of embankments of agricultural terraces and balks. Furthermore, it was indicated that DEM visualisation techniques provide the possibility to measure the length of detected embankments of agricultural terraces and balks on abandoned land and it is impossible to measure them during field mapping due to dense vegetation. On the contrary, in most cases it is impossible to detect stone mounds using DEM visualisation techniques due to their varied size. This study emphasises the necessity of being aware of limitations during using ready-made ALS data.

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The Archaeology of Unexploded World War II Bomb Sites in the Koźle Basin, Southern Poland

Cited by 5 publications

References 32 publications

Anthropogenic Landforms Derived from LiDAR Data in the Woodlands near Kotlarnia (Koźle Basin, Poland)

Anthropogenic Landforms Derived from LiDAR Data in the Woodlands near Kotlarnia (Koźle Basin, Poland)

Detecting Vietnam War Bomb Craters in Declassified Historical KH-9 Satellite Imagery

Detection of past landscape elements in marginal mountain areas—the example of the Western Carpathians

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