How Many Body Farms Are in the United States?

There are currently at least seven outdoor human decomposition research facilities operating across the United States, a number that has grown steadily since the very first one opened in 1980. These sites, colloquially called “body farms,” are spread across different climatic regions on purpose, because decomposition behaves very differently depending on temperature, humidity, soil type, and insect populations. The count continues to shift as universities propose new facilities and existing ones expand their missions.

Where It All Started

The first outdoor human decomposition research facility was established by Dr. William Bass in 1980 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.¹ Bass was a forensic anthropologist who kept running into the same problem: when law enforcement brought him skeletal remains and asked how long a person had been dead, the science to answer that question barely existed. Almost nothing was known about what happens to a human body when it decomposes outdoors over weeks, months, or years. So Bass convinced the university to let him place donated human remains in a small outdoor plot and simply watch what happened. That modest beginning, sometimes called the Anthropology Research Facility, became the foundation for an entirely new branch of forensic science.

For more than two decades, the Tennessee facility was the only one of its kind. Researchers there generated the first systematic data on how bodies progress through decomposition stages in a temperate southeastern climate, and their findings became the default reference for forensic investigators nationwide. The problem was that those findings reflected one climate and one ecosystem. A body left in the Arizona desert, the humid Gulf Coast, or the frozen upper Midwest does not decompose the same way, and investigators in those regions had to guess at how to adjust the Tennessee data for local conditions.

The Current Facilities and Why Geography Matters

Starting in the mid-2000s, additional facilities began opening at universities across the country. Western Carolina University in North Carolina opened one in 2006, followed by Texas State University in 2008, Sam Houston State University in East Texas in 2009, Southern Illinois University in 2012, and Colorado Mesa University in western Colorado in 2013. The University of South Florida added a facility in 2017, and Northern Michigan University later established one in the Upper Peninsula, bringing research into a genuinely cold continental climate. A few other institutions have launched or proposed smaller programs since then, and the exact count depends partly on how you define an active facility versus one still in its early stages.

The geographic spread is the whole point. A facility in the high-desert plateau of western Colorado experiences different temperatures, humidity levels, elevation, UV exposure, and insect communities than one in the subtropical heat of Florida or the dense hardwood forests of the Appalachian foothills. By running parallel research programs in these varied environments, forensic scientists can build region-specific data that actually helps local investigators estimate how long someone has been dead, how a body was moved, or whether environmental conditions altered the evidence.

Why Climate Creates Such Different Outcomes

The rate and pattern of decomposition shift dramatically with climate, and the differences go far beyond simply “hotter equals faster.” In arid environments like the American Southwest, summer temperatures above 38°C (100°F) cause rapid bloating from gas buildup within two to seven days, but the dryness can then stall the process entirely, mummifying outer tissues and preserving remains for months or even centuries.² Exposure of large portions of the skeleton in outdoor desert settings typically does not occur until four to six months after death. Inside closed structures in the same climate, the trajectory is different again, with rapid decomposition and skeletonization happening much sooner because the enclosure traps moisture and heat.

Cold climates present their own challenges. Research in extreme cold has shown that decomposition can essentially pause when remains freeze. In one study, carcasses placed outdoors in winter showed superficial blood vessel outlining in the abdominal area at the end of November, then no visible changes for the entire winter as they remained frozen under snow.³ Freeze-thaw cycles add a further complication. Research comparing frozen and non-frozen remains found that frozen remains were slow to enter early decomposition but were actually the first to reach skeletonization, suggesting that freezing disrupts tissue in ways that accelerate later breakdown once thawing occurs.⁴ These results have direct forensic relevance: if an investigator can determine that remains experienced a freeze-thaw event, the approach to estimating time since death changes substantially.

Even within temperate regions, season of death makes a measurable difference. Research at a temperate body farm found that the major biogeochemical effects of decomposition appeared between roughly 13 and 139 days for donors placed in warm weather, but were delayed to 31 to 364 days and reduced in size for donors placed in cold weather.⁵ This kind of seasonal calibration data is exactly what body farms in different climates exist to produce.

What Researchers Actually Study

The popular image of a body farm is a fenced field where cadavers lie on the ground in various states of decay. That is roughly accurate, but the research happening at these sites has grown well beyond simply observing how bodies look over time. Modern facilities produce data in forensic entomology, soil biogeochemistry, volatile organic compound analysis, microbial ecology, and skeletal biology. The donated remains also eventually contribute to skeletal reference collections that anthropologists use for decades afterward.

Forensic entomology, the study of insects that colonize remains, is one of the oldest research threads. Different insect species arrive at a body in a predictable sequence, and their developmental stages can help estimate how long a body has been exposed. But “predictable” turns out to be highly local. Research in dry tropical environments has found that decomposition can be dramatically faster than in temperate zones, with remains reaching the dry/remains stage by day five, and that later-arriving beetle species may be more useful for estimating time since death than the fly species that dominate temperate-climate research.⁶ Without region-specific data from facilities in different climates, investigators would apply the wrong insect timelines.

The Chemical Footprint Left in the Soil

One of the more surprising research areas at body farms involves what happens to the ground beneath and around a decomposing body. When a body breaks down, it releases a concentrated pulse of nutrients into the surrounding soil, creating what researchers call a “cadaver decomposition island.” The chemical signature is pronounced and long-lasting.

Within the first 10 to 15 days, the average nitrogen content in surrounding soil more than doubled, rising from around 0.4% to 1.05%, and a nitrogen isotope marker climbed from 3.3‰ to as high as 9.9‰ by day 20.⁷ Tracked over a longer period, these elevated nitrogen signals persisted well into the 900-day mark, though they gradually declined. Longer-term research has found that some soil chemicals, like dissolved organic carbon, dissolved organic nitrogen, and potassium, remained higher than control soil up to 1,752 days after placement, nearly five years.⁸

The forensic application is straightforward. If investigators suspect a body was once at a location but has since been moved, the chemical changes in the soil could confirm it. The pattern of which chemicals have peaked and which are declining could also help estimate how long ago the body was there. This soil-chemistry work depends on having facilities in different soil types and climates so that baseline patterns can be established for different regions.

Decomposition Odors and Search Applications

Another active research line involves the volatile organic compounds, essentially the gases and airborne chemicals, that a decomposing body produces. These compounds are what cadaver dogs are trained to detect, and understanding them in detail could improve both canine training and the development of electronic detection tools.

Research on fresh-stage human cadavers identified that a single compound, 2-heptanone, accounted for nearly half the scent profile. Four other compounds appeared repeatedly across the 20 subjects studied: dimethyl disulfide, ethyl acetate, limonene, and 3-methyl-1-butanol.⁹ As decomposition progresses, the odor profile shifts. Early post-mortem profiles are dominated by nitrogen-containing compounds driven by enzymatic and bacterial activity, with esters and alcohols appearing as microbial transformation and lipid breakdown increase.¹⁰

This research has practical search-and-rescue implications. In simulated building collapse scenarios, researchers placed human donors inside rubble and collected air samples over a month. They found that the volatile compound profile changed detectably about 15 days after the simulated disaster, reflecting an identifiable shift in the decomposition process even through layers of debris.¹¹ For urban search-and-rescue teams working after earthquakes or structural failures, knowing when and what chemical signals to look for could speed the recovery of victims.

Why Pigs Are Not a Perfect Substitute

Many forensic decomposition studies, particularly at institutions that cannot accept human donors, use pig carcasses as proxies. Pigs have long been considered the best animal stand-in because their skin, body fat, and gut flora share broad similarities with humans. But body farm research comparing the two side by side has shown that the match is rougher than commonly assumed.

A study directly comparing pig and human decomposition found key differences, particularly in colder weather. In winter, pigs lost about 75% of their mass, while humans lost less than 50%. In summer, both lost around 80%, making the warm-weather comparison more favorable. Visual scoring of decomposition progression told a somewhat different story: pigs and humans eventually reached similar decomposition scores, but pigs got there faster in the early stages.¹² The researchers cautioned against directly extrapolating pig data to human cases, especially for decomposition modeling. This is one of the strongest arguments for maintaining human decomposition facilities: pig-based data can guide research, but it cannot simply be plugged into forensic casework without adjustment.

How Bodies Are Obtained

Every body at a legitimate research facility arrived through a voluntary donation program. People register while alive, much as they would for organ donation, consenting to have their remains used for research after death. The next of kin are also typically involved in the consent process. No facility in the United States purchases bodies, uses unclaimed remains, or accepts donors without documented consent.

Consent practices in body donation programs are an active area of ethical discussion. Research into best practices has found that while informed consent is broadly accepted as the standard, the actual consent processes vary substantially between programs. Some guidelines suggest that consent could be expanded to include things like conversations between prospective donors and students, ongoing communication with donors over time, and greater inclusivity of diverse donor preferences.¹³ Most facilities have waiting lists, and some have had to limit enrollment because demand from prospective donors exceeds what the facility can accommodate, a fact that often surprises people.

After outdoor research is complete, which can take months to years depending on the study, the remaining skeletal material is typically cleaned and accessioned into a curated skeletal collection. These collections become a permanent research resource. Physical anthropologists use them to study population variation, develop methods for identifying unknown remains, and track how the modern human skeleton differs from historical populations.

Facilities Outside the United States

The body farm concept has spread internationally, though more slowly. Australia opened its first facility, the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER), near Sydney in 2016. Facilities have since been proposed or established in Canada, the Netherlands, and other countries. Each international facility fills the same gap that drove the expansion within the United States: decomposition data from one climate zone simply does not transfer well to another. A body left in the Australian outback, a Dutch peat bog, or a Canadian boreal forest will follow a different timeline and attract different organisms than one in Tennessee.

The international expansion also highlights a cultural dimension. Many societies have strong taboos about leaving human remains exposed outdoors, and establishing a facility requires navigating not just scientific and regulatory approval but community acceptance. Some proposed facilities have faced significant local opposition, sometimes from neighbors concerned about odor or property values, sometimes from cultural or religious groups opposed to the treatment of the dead. The programs that have succeeded tend to be ones that invested heavily in community engagement and transparent donor consent processes before breaking ground.

Ongoing Debates About How Many Are Enough

There is genuine discussion in the forensic science community about whether seven or eight US facilities adequately represent the country’s environmental diversity. The existing sites cluster in the Southeast, Texas, and the Mountain West, with one in the upper Midwest. Notable gaps remain: no facility currently operates in the Pacific Northwest with its wet maritime climate, none in the northern Great Plains, and none in New England. Each of these regions has soil types, insect populations, temperature ranges, and moisture levels that differ meaningfully from the regions already represented.

Opening a new facility is not simple. Universities need dedicated land that is securely fenced and reasonably isolated, a faculty member with the expertise to run the program, institutional review board approval, a functioning donor program, and often years of community negotiation. Funding is another barrier. These programs rarely generate revenue, and grant funding for taphonomic research, while growing, remains modest compared to other scientific fields. The result is that new facilities tend to appear opportunistically, when a motivated researcher at a willing institution in an underrepresented climate zone manages to assemble all the necessary pieces, rather than through any coordinated national plan.

Some researchers have argued that the priority should shift from opening new outdoor sites to making better use of existing ones through standardized research protocols. If every facility measures decomposition the same way, collects the same soil and insect data at the same intervals, and shares data through common databases, the value of each individual site increases. Others counter that no amount of standardization compensates for the absence of data from climates where no facility exists. Both positions have merit, and in practice the field is pursuing both simultaneously, improving coordination among existing facilities while supporting new ones where the opportunity arises.