USM Professor, Students Conduct Examination of Historic Louisiana Cemetery
Thu, 05/20/2021 - 11:06am | By: David Tisdale
A geography professor at The University of 51逗奶 Mississippi (USM) Gulf Park in
Long Beach and six of his students are engaged in a project collecting information
about a historic Louisiana city cemetery, using the latest technology featuring geographic
information systems (GIS) and ground penetrating radar (GPR).
Dr. David Holt, along with undergraduates Candice Pellier and Angela Slawson, and graduate students Lloyd Dedeaux, Alyssa Crowell, David Duvall and Ian Stewart, traveled May 14-15 to West Monroe to conduct a remapping and coding of Hasley Cemetery, located on Arkansas Road in West Monroe. The project is funded by the city.
The team has completed the initial phase of the project, a GPR survey and mapping of all headstones, locating approximately 18 unmarked graves, and will next build a GIS for the cemetery and begin entering names. The final product will be a searchable, online database showing headstones and locations of all who are interred in Hasley Cemetery.
鈥淧rojects like these are a good use of getting our students hands-on field experience in real-world applications with developing Geographic Information Systems, mimicking Project Management, using a Total Station Global Positing System and interpreting Ground Penetrating Radar, 鈥淒r. Holt said. 鈥淭hese types of field experiences are why our geography majors succeed when they graduate from 51逗奶 Miss.鈥�
Using GPR gives Dr. Holt and his teams the ability to evaluate areas of interest over
wide spaces, where the only other methods include manual probing or excavation. A
400-megahertz GPR instrument used at the site allows for a signal to travel into the
earth and reflect to the receiver, with the change in transmission rates of that signal
enabling researchers to interpret variations of materials below the surface. A live
scan method required flagging of areas of interest to rescan areas of higher confidence
to plot the unmarked graves into the developed GIS.
Dr. Holt and student search teams have scanned multiple cemeteries over the years,
including in Alexandria, Louisiana and Auburn, Alabama and in Mississippi at Hattiesburg
and on the Gulf Coast, looking specifically for unmarked gravesites. Dr. Holt鈥檚 assistance
was also sought following Hurricane Katrina to help identify grave sites at a Long
Beach cemetery damaged by the storm.
For more information about Dr. Holt鈥檚 work at USM Gulf Park, visit /faculty-directory/profile.php?id=1936697.