Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia are developing methods that locate buried landmines by detecting the effects these explosives have on the vegetation around them.

The chemicals in explosives used in landmines such as Research Department explosive or RDX and trinitrotoluene or TNT damage or modify plants or grasses that cover them.

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Researchers aim to detect these changes from afar by connecting remote sensing equipment that detect plant damage to smart devices such as a smartphone.

Leaking landmines release small amounts of their chemical explosives over time. Since the landmines are tough and last several decades, they leave poisons in the soil.

Vegetation that grows above the explosive's poisons could show signs of chemical contamination such as curled leaves and brown spots.

The explosive chemicals affect some species of plants more than others. In laboratory tests, for example, the ordinary weed nutsedge thrive on RDX and TNT present in the soil, said Stephen Via, a postgraduate student at VCU.

On the other hand, a small tree, the winged elm, reacted to the explosives as if given an herbicide.

If some plants are more susceptible to the RDX and TNT within an ecosystem, then the imbalance in the species may become detectable by remote sensing equipment mounted on satellites or planes.

The technique under development is especially convenient in regions where thick vegetation hides the landmines. This situation is prevalent in areas such as Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe.

"Imagine if you could hold up your phone and look at a plant, and it's green [for safe] or it's red [for danger]. Imagine the humanitarian value," said Don Young, a VCU plant physiologist and senior investigator on the project.

A U.S. Army grant breathed life into the project in the search for new techniques to expose explosives buried underground.

The research team started off with stressed plants as flora sucks up the chemicals from the earth where they are planted. 

TagsLandmine, Explosives, Plants, TNT, RDX, Smart Device, smart devices