Much of the forensic comparison of soils has focused on mineralogy at the expense of soil organic components. This chapter discusses how the nature of soil organic matter could be a useful tool in forensic comparison of soil. The chemical diversity and resistant nature of most plant-derived wax markers in soil result in the potential to provide robust profiles that vary with the characteristics of the vegetation that contributed to its formation. The epicuticular wax of most plants contains mixtures of long-chain aliphatic lipids, including hydrocarbons (mainly n-alkanes), long-chain fatty alcohols and fatty acids. The composition of these wax compounds differ between plant species, and these patterns persist in the soil. Plant wax markers may have value in characterising soils for forensic investigation where they could be used to indicate vegetation characteristics of an unknown sample, or for evaluative comparison of a ‘questioned’ evidence sample to that of a known scene of crime/reference site. We conducted a pilot study in North East Scotland to determine whether individual patches of garden planting bed soil could be discriminated from one another based on their plant wax marker profiles. Results indicated that both n-alkane and long-chain fatty alcohol profiles in garden soils were generally specific to the individual planting bed. The soils from the planting beds could be discriminated from one another, with the exception of two beds from within the same garden which differed little in broad-scale vegetation type. These results demonstrate the potential of plant wax markers in discriminating patches of soil at a scale relevant to forensic evaluative comparison. Further studies are required on soils and vegetation from a wider population of gardens and vegetation types, to extend the application of these plant wax markers to facilitate investigative approaches in potentially indicating plant community characteristics associated with an unknown source.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ali HAM, Mayes RW, Lamb CS, Hector BL, Verma AK and Ørskov ER (2005a). The potential of long-chain fatty alcohols and long-chain fatty acids as diet composition markers. Journal of Agricultural Science 143:85–95.
Ali HAM, Mayes RW, Hector BL and Ørskov ER (2005b). Assessment of n-alkanes, long-chain fatty alcohols and long-chain fatty acids as diet composition markers: The concentrations of these compounds in rangeland species from Sudan. Animal Feed Science and Technology 121:257–271.
Baldock JA and Skjemstad JO (2000). Role of the soil matrix and minerals in protecting natural organic materials against biological attack. Organic Geochemistry 31:697–710.
Bugalho MN, Dove H, Kelman W, Wood JT and Mayes RW (2004). Plant wax alkanes and alcohols as herbivore diet composition markers. Journal of Range Management 57:259–268.
Bull ID, Nott CJ, van Bergen PF, Poulton PR and Evershed RP (2000). Organic geochemical studies of soils from the Rothamsted classical experiments — VI. The occurrence and source of organic acids in an experimental grassland soil. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 32:1367–1376.
Ceccanti B, Masciandaro G and Macci C (2007). Pyrolysis-gas chromatography to evaluate the organic matter quality of a mulched soil. Soil and Tillage Research 97:71–78.
Challinor JM (2001). Review: The development and applications of thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation reactions. Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis 61:3–34.
Clarke KR (1993). Non-parametric multivariate analysis of changes in community structure. Australian Journal of Ecology 18:117–143.
Clarke KR and Gorley RN (2006). PRIMER v6: User Manual/Tutorial. PRIMER-E, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK.
Dawson LA, Towers W, Mayes RW, Craig J, Vaisanen K and Waterhouse EC (2004). The use of plant wax signatures in characterising soil organic matter. In: Forensic Geoscience: Principles,Techniques and Applications (Eds. K Pye and DJ Croft), pp. 269–276. Geological Society Special Publication 232, London.
Dawson LA, Campbell CD, Hillier S and Brewer MJ (2008). Methods of characterising and fingerprinting soils for forensic application. In: Soil Analysis in Forensic Taphonomy: Chemical and Biological Effects of Buried Human Remains (Eds. M Tibbett and D Carter), pp. 271–315. CRC, Boca Raton, FL.
Dove H and Mayes RW (2006). Protocol for the analysis of n-alkanes and other plant-wax compounds and for their use as makers for quanitifying the nutrient supply of large mammalian herbivores. Nature protocols 1:1680–1696. [online Journal].
Girvan MS, Bullimore J, Pretty JN, Osborn AM and Ball AS (2003). Soil type is the primary determinant of the composition of the total and active bacterial communities in arable soils. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 69:1800–1809.
Horswell J, Cordiner SJ, Maas EW, Martin TM, Sutherland BW, Speir TW, Nogales B and Osborn AM (2002). Forensic comparison of soils by bacterial community DNA profiling. Journal of Forensic Sciences 47:350–353.
Jansen B, Nierop KGJ, Hageman JA, Cleef AM and Verstraten JM (2006). The straight-chain lipid biomarker composition of plant species responsible for the dominant biomass production along two altitudinal transects in the Ecuadorian Andes. Organic Geochemistry 37:1514–1536.
Krull ES, Baldock JA and Skjemstad JO (2003). Importance of mechanisms and processes of the stabilisation of soil organic matter for modelling carbon turnover. Functional Plant Biology 30:207–222.
Lerner A, Shor Y, Vinokurov A, Okon Y and Jurkevitch E (2006). Can denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis of amplified 16s rDNA of soil bacterial populations be used in forensic investigations? Soil Biology and Biochemistry 38:1188–1192.
Locard E (1930). Analyses of dust trace parts I, II and III. American Journal of Police Science, 1:276–298; 401–418; 496–514.
Macdonald LM, Singh BK, Thomas N, Brewer MJ, Campbell CD and. Dawson LA (2008). Microbial DNA profiling by multiplex terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism for forensic comparison of soil and the influence of sample condition. Journal of Applied Microbiology. 105:813–821.
Mayes RW and Dove H (2006). The use of n-alkanes and other plant-wax compounds as markers for studying the feeding and nutrition of large mammalian herbivores. In: Herbivores: The Assessment of Intake, Digestibility and the Roles of Secondary Compounds (Eds. CA Sandoval-Castro, FD de B Hovell, F Torres Acosta and A Ayala-Burgos), pp153–182. BSAS Publication 34, Nottingham University Press, Nottingham, UK.
Mildenhall DC (2006). An unusual appearance of a common pollen type indicates the scene of the crime. Forensic Science International 163:236–240.
Naafs, DFW, van Bergen PF, de Jong MA, Oonincx A and de Leeuw JW (2004). Total lipid extracts from characteristic soil horizons in a podzol profile. European Journal of Soil Science 55:657–669.
Ruffell A and McKinley J (2005). Forensic geoscience: applications of geology, geomorphology and geophysics to criminal investigations. Earth Science Reviews 69:235–247.
Stephanou E (1989). Long-chain aldehydes: An overlooked but ubiquitous compound class of possible geochemical and environmental significance. Naturwissenschaften 76:464–467.
Wakelin SA, Macdonald LM, Rogers SL, Gregg AL, Bolger TP and Baldock JA (2008). Habitat selective factors influencing the structural composition and functional capacity of microbial communities in agricultural soils. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 40:803–813.
Wiesenberg GLB, Schwark L and Schmidt MWI (2004). Improved automated extraction and separation procedure for soil lipid analyses. European Journal of Soil Science 55:349–356.
Wiesenberg GLB, Schwark L and Schmidt MWI (2006). Extractable lipid contents and colour in particle-size separates and bulk arable soils. European Journal of Soil Science 57:634–643.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mayes, R.W., Macdonald, L.M., Ross, J.M., Dawson, L.A. (2009). Discrimination of Domestic Garden Soils Using Plant Wax Compounds as Markers. In: Ritz, K., Dawson, L., Miller, D. (eds) Criminal and Environmental Soil Forensics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9204-6_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9204-6_29
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-9203-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-9204-6
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)