Detection and Environmental Consequences of Explosive Ordnance Contamination

Session ID#: 282541

Session Description:
As of March 2026, 80 armed conflicts are ongoing worldwide, and an estimated 240,000 km² in 60 countries are contaminated by unexploded ordnance (UXO). Beyond the immediate threat to human life, UXO complicate land use, recovery, and environmental management. Remote sensing, geospatial analysis, open-source intelligence, and machine learning increasingly support humanitarian and investigative efforts to detect UXO, classify ordnance, and assess provenance. These advances are important for evaluating exposure risk, prioritizing clearance, guiding post-conflict land-use decisions, and improving public safety. This session examines the environmental impacts of ordnance contamination, including effects on soils, vegetation, agriculture, hydrologic systems, and terrain stability. Topics include UXO detection, contamination mapping, ecosystem disturbance, wildfire risk, erosion, and other landscape-scale consequences of military activity and explosive remnants of war. Contributions on new methods, datasets, validation approaches, and case studies are especially encouraged, particularly those focused on scalable detection, provenance, and decision-support tools.
Index Terms:

0240 Public health [GEOHEALTH]
0299 General or miscellaneous [GEOHEALTH]
1916 Data and information discovery [INFORMATICS]
1918 Decision analysis [INFORMATICS]
Primary Convener:  Chad Melton, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States
Conveners:  Nathaniel Raymond, Yale University, New Haven, United States and Courtney Bliler, Yale University, New Haven, United States
See more of: GeoHealth