Ground Penetrating Radar
Farmer Cemetery
Lake Russell Wildlife Management Area
November 3, 2004
Background: The Farmer Cemetery, located on Farmer Mountain in the Lake Russell Wildlife Management Area is one of the oldest cemeteries in the area dating back to early 1800's but also has graves that date into the 1930's. The majority of the cemetery consisted of old brown stones, no names, lost to the woods in this National Forest until the FFFF organization and descendants
of James and Patsy Farmer restored the cemetery. However, there were many depressions indicating graves that no longer had headstones and the feeling that there were many more graves, now unmarked, that needed to be identified.
John Mayer, Forest Archeologist for the US Forest Service, suggested that the use of Ground Penetrating Radar would be perfect for surveying the cemetery and that it would give us a 3-D image of the ground conditions leading to identification of individual graves. John solicited the support of Kent Schneider, ....., a trained expert with the Forest Service who was delighted to put this modern technology
to work in this 1800's cemetery.
The process begins with the definition of a rectangular section to be analyzed. For the major part of the cemetery, it was determined that a 15 meter by 18 meter plot would be our first 'target' area. The border of the plot was laid out in 1 meter intervals along the east and west sides so that we would accumulate data making traces from south to north, and north to south, crossing the graves as we proceeded. That would give us the best
definition of ground changes as we crossed each grave.
The expertise to set up the equipment of Kent was outstanding. The clay material of NE Georgia makes this an incredible challenge, however, after many adjustments, the data seemed to be perfect so the process began.
From the FFFF group were Howard Farmer, Valerie Bucher, and Jim Winsness. From the Forest Service were Kent Schneider, John Mayer, and Becky Bruce. Two people were used to stretch the tape measure between a set of stakes to be used to guide the path of the radar tool. Two people were used to move the radar tool in a constant path along the tape and to move the heavy data cable along with the person operating the radar unit. The person pulling the radar unit
had to press a button at the start, end, and every meter along the path so that the location of the equipment along the path was precisely tracked.
Kent Schneider operated the data analysis and recording unit. Each path created a data file showing the cross section of the ground to a depth of about 1.5 meters. The process was to go from east to west along the tape, then to make a second trip from west to east half way between the stakes so that in fact, 2 paths were made 1/2 meter apart. It was also necessary for one person to make notes of any major bumps or incidents that happened along the path from side to side to assist in the analysis of the data later.
Some paths required us to stop for a major obstruction such as coping, go over the coping and capture data between coping, go over the other side of the coping, and make another data collection to the opposite border thus there were in some cases, 3 files for a single trip across the 15 meter path! Kent had to keep all the files identified as to which of the 37 passes we made and within each path, each such start and stop. It is a tremendous data collection process.
Photos will help you understand the process:
The team: Kent Schneider, Howard Farmer, John Mayer, Michael Gryson (District Ranger), and Becky Bruce - Valerie must have been moving the tape measure!
The stakes can be seen going down the east (right) and west (left) sides of the area to be analyzed.
The radar device which is dragged along the surface - it sends and receives the signal and on the handle is a button that is pressed to mark the 1 meter intervals as we cross the path.
The group organizing to start a path from east to west.
The device being dragged along a path 1/2 meter north of the previous path but now going in a west to east direction.