The effect of seasonality on the application of accumulated degree-days to estimate the early post-mortem interval

Abstract

Effective management of groundwater resources during drought is essential. How is groundwater currently managed during droughts, and in the face of environmental change, what should be the future priorities? Four themes are explored, from the perspective of groundwater management in England (UK): (1) integration of drought definitions; (2) enhanced fundamental monitoring; (3) integrated modelling of groundwater in the water cycle; and (4) better information sharing. Whilst these themes are considered in the context of England, globally, they are relevant wherever groundwater is affected by drought.

MicroRNAs as Useful Tools to Estimate Time Since Death. A Systematic Review of Current Literature

“…All the procedures used to obtain the time of death are not totally accurate and they only offer a simple approximation because there are numerous variables which can influence the estimation of the PMI, such as environment temperature, location of the body, body structure or cause of death. These methods have limited practical relevance even when are used to the very early post-mortem period [42,44].…”

“…New approaches such as flow cytometry, capillary zone electrophoresis, magnetic resonance spectroscopy and immunohistochemistry have been proposed to evaluate postmortem changes, trying to extrapolate the PMI [54]. These methods alone do not make on their own death time estimation more specific, but the combination of different approaches has been recommended in order to decrease the intrinsic error rate of each method [44,54].…”

Uncovering Forensic Taphonomic Agents: Animal Scavenging in the European Context

“…Second, animal scavenging can cause issues in interpreting the rate of decomposition and subsequently in the estimation of time since death. The consumption of soft tissue accelerates the decomposition process [2,28,[37][38][39][40][41][42], while the consumption of insects and the prevention of their oviposition can slow down the decomposition rate [5,[43][44][45]. If scavenging activity goes unnoticed, applied methods may lead to false PMI estimates, especially when they rely on decomposition stages, insect activity, or the chemical properties of the underlying soil [4,5,38,42].…”

Outdoor human decomposition in Sweden: A retrospective quantitative study of forensic‐taphonomic changes and postmortem interval in terrestrial and aquatic settings

“…To that end, we hope that a future national study will advance knowledge of at what point (in relation to the decomposition process) saponification forms in Swedish environments. Other aspects worth exploring in a larger Swedish study are how variables connected to seasonality (e.g., air humidity, rainfall, and sun exposure [22,70,84,85]) affect human taphonomy, as well as the taphonomy of hanging and burials. Lastly, a larger and multivariable study of cases from freshwater, brackish water, and saltwater can hopefully help advance the current knowledge of how to understand and measure aquatic decomposition in relation to time since death.…”

“…[1,[15][16][17] The rate and extent of postmortem morphological changes is highly variable since it is influenced by multiple, sometimes interrelated, factors. These factors are both intrinsic to the corpse and extrinsic (environmental), and include (but are not limited to) age, body mass and constitution, health status, clothing and/or wrapping, bacterial/insect/animal activity, setting, temperature, moisture, soil type and pH, vegetation, altitude, seasonality, and decomposer community structure (i.e., biological agents that use human remains for minerals and nutrients) [18][19][20][21][22]. Decomposition can be retarded temporarily or long-term [18] by processes such as freezing and thawing, [2,23,24] desiccation [25,26], and saponification [27][28][29].…”