Controlled field experiments of wind effects on thermal signatures of buried and surface-laid land mines

Thermal signatures of buried land mines depend on a complex combination of environmental conditions, soil properties, and properties and burial depth of the land mine. Due to the complex nature of the problem most modeling and experimental efforts to understand thermal signatures of land mines have focused on the effects of one or a few variables. Of these variables, the effect of wind speed has received little attention in modeling and experimental studies. In this contribution we discuss the role of wind in the generation of thermal images and we present results of field experiments at the outdoor land mine detection test facility at New Mexico Tech. Here, several anti-tank and antipersonnel land mine simulants have been buried in sand, loam, and clay soils. During the measurements the environmental and soil conditions were continuously monitored using a fully equipped weather station and using probes for measurements of soil temperature and soil water content.