ABSTRACT
General forensic principles and hints that should be understood and applied for effective environmental forensic investigations and acquisition of defensible evidence are given below. Illustrative comparisons are included to prove such concepts:
• Use multiple independent “lines of evidence”/forensic techniques: Unless a case can be conclusively solved by some obvious historical evidence (e.g., a reported release or dumping) or straightforward evidence, more than one forensic technique is recommended to be used independently to obtain defensible evidence. It is important to specify that this general concept should not be used with the idea of simply providing stronger evidence but rather to verify and guide the forensic investigation.
