During World War II, the U.S. Army drafted a rugged area of the Monongahela National Forest to ready troops for combat in the mountains of northern Italy.

Today, West Virginia University is mobilizing for a search of any unexploded ordnance that might remain in that two-county span of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.

The Bennett Department of Chemistry and the Forensic and Investigative Sciences Program are teaming with the Division of the Plant and Soil Sciences and WVU -based West Virginia Water Research Institute on the project.

Its not so much the ammo as it is the aftermath of it, said Dr. Suzanne Bell, who directs WVU s forensic program while serving as an assistant professor of chemistry.

After 60 years, any unexploded ordnance there is most likely breaking down, she said. That means propellants and other compounds are leaching into the soil and groundwater, and then being taken up by vegetation.

And that could mean that the areabetween Canaan Valley and Seneca Rocks in Randolph and Grant countiescould be environmentally compromised.

A big part of the project, Bell said, will be examining plant, soil and water samples for those materials, while also searching for the unexploded ordnance itself. Its anenvironmental forensic approach,she said, that could yield a lot of knowledge.

We want to learn everything we can about the soil,she said of the project that is funded with a contract of more than $368,000 from the National Environmental Education and Training Center.

The challenge, she said, comes in the form of time and terrain. The rugged area is isolated. And the ordnance is buried in the ground a various depths and then hidden more by the heavy plant life thats had six decades to grow.

Research teams including WVU students will begin collecting the samples this summer, Bell said. The deadline for final collection and analysis is Dec. 31.

The plan is come up with an approach to locating unexplored ordnance in other areas that can be used by both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the State Department of Environmental Protection.

Along with Bell, the principal investigators are Dr. Louis McDonald, who conducts environmental soil research in the Division of Plant and Soil Sciences; and Dr. John Quaranta and Jen Fulton of the Water Research Institute.

For more information, contact Bell at suzanne.bell@mail.wvu.edu or 304-293-3435, ext. 6436.