Estimates suggest that over 15,000 people are buried at East End Cemetery, a historic African American cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, that until recently received no public funding for upkeep. Here, we present a case study analysis and potentially replicable methodology for counting and locating unmarked burial depressions in non-forested areas using a low-cost sUAV (drone) and simple, hydrology-based geographic information systems analyses. Upon visual inspection of 12% of our final 8,000 burial site dataset, we find our dataset is a plausible representation (75% accuracy) of potential grave locations. We hope that the methods presented below can be implemented to assist in reclaiming historically underfunded Black cemeteries across the American South.

据估计，有超过 15,000 人被埋葬在东区公墓，这是位于弗吉尼亚州里士满的一座历史悠久的非裔美国人公墓，直到最近还没有收到任何公共资金进行维护。在这里，我们提出了一个案例研究分析和潜在可复制的方法，用于使用低成本的 sUAV（无人机）和简单的基于水文的地理信息系统分析来计算和定位非森林地区未标记的埋葬洼地。在对我们最终的 8,000 个墓地数据集的 12% 进行目视检查后，我们发现我们的数据集是潜在坟墓位置的合理表示（75% 准确度）。我们希望可以实施下面介绍的方法，以帮助在美国南部开垦历史上资金不足的黑人墓地。