Where Is the Body Farm Located? All US Locations

The United States is home to at least seven outdoor human decomposition research facilities, commonly called “body farms,” spread across different climatic regions from the humid Southeast to the arid high desert of Colorado. The original was established by Dr. William Bass in 1980 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and the idea has since expanded to sites in North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, Florida, and Wisconsin. Each facility exists because decomposition varies dramatically by environment, and forensic science needs region-specific data to solve crimes accurately.

The Original in Knoxville, Tennessee

The Anthropology Research Facility at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is where the concept began. Dr. William Bass founded it in 1980, initially to study the large-scale environmental factors that influence decomposition and to improve estimates of time since death.¹ The facility sits on a wooded plot near the university’s medical center. Over more than four decades, it has received hundreds of donated bodies and produced foundational research on how human remains change in a temperate, humid climate. The nickname “body farm” actually comes from Patricia Cornwell’s 1994 novel about the facility, and the name stuck even though researchers generally prefer the more clinical term “human taphonomy facility.”

Knoxville’s facility remains one of the most productive in the field, but its single-climate limitation was apparent early on. A decomposition timeline built from data gathered in East Tennessee’s warm, humid summers and mild winters does not translate well to a desert in July or a frozen field in Minnesota in January. That gap is the reason the network of facilities grew.

All Known US Body Farm Locations

The facilities have opened in waves since the early 2000s, each deliberately situated in a different ecological zone to capture climate-specific decomposition data. Here is the current roster of major US outdoor human decomposition research facilities:

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN: The Anthropology Research Facility (ARF), founded 1980. Humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. The longest-running and most-cited facility in the world.
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC: The Forensic Osteology Research Station (FOREST), opened 2006. Located in the southern Appalachian Mountains at higher elevation, providing cooler temperatures and different soil types than Knoxville.
Texas State University, San Marcos, TX: The Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF), operational since 2008. Set on a large open natural range in a semi-arid, subtropical environment, one of the largest facilities by acreage.²
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX: The Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility (STAFS), opened 2009. Located about 160 miles east of FARF in a more humid part of Texas with dense piney woods, providing a useful contrast to FARF’s arid landscape.
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL: The Complex for Forensic Anthropology Research (CFAR), opened 2012. Situated in the transition zone between the Midwest and the South, with hot summers and cold winters that bring freeze-thaw cycles.
Colorado Mesa University, Grand Junction, CO: The Forensic Investigation Research Station (FIRS), opened 2013. The only facility in a high-desert environment at roughly 4,500 feet elevation, with extremely low humidity and intense sun exposure.
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL: The Facility for Outdoor Research and Training (FORT). Located in a true subtropical climate with high heat, heavy rainfall, and year-round insect activity.

A facility at Fox Valley Technical College in Wisconsin has also been referenced in the forensic literature, adding a genuinely cold-climate data point to the network. Wisconsin winters routinely drop well below freezing for months, creating decomposition conditions fundamentally different from anything available at the southern or western sites.

Why Climate Matters So Much

The reason these facilities are scattered across the country is not bureaucratic. It is scientific. Decomposition is not a single process running on a universal clock. It is a cascade of biological, chemical, and environmental events, and the speed and sequence of those events shift depending on temperature, humidity, rainfall, soil type, altitude, and the local insect population. A body left outdoors in San Marcos, Texas, in August will reach skeletonization in a fraction of the time it would take in Grand Junction, Colorado, in the same month, because the heat, moisture, and insect communities are radically different.

This has direct consequences for criminal investigations. When a body is found outdoors, one of the first questions investigators ask is how long it has been there. That estimate, the postmortem interval, depends on comparing the state of the remains to known decomposition timelines. If the only data available came from Tennessee, applying it to a case in Colorado’s high desert would produce badly wrong estimates. Each facility generates regionally calibrated data that law enforcement can actually use.

Research at the Texas State facility, for example, has documented how insect activity in semi-arid subtropical conditions differs from what was previously described in the literature, which was dominated by Knoxville’s data.² Blowfly species composition, arrival timing, and larval development rates all vary by region, and those differences can shift a time-of-death estimate by days or even weeks.

What Actually Happens at These Facilities

The research conducted at body farms covers a surprisingly wide range of forensic questions. The most visible work involves tracking the stages of decomposition over time, but the science has expanded well beyond that.

Soil chemistry is a major area of study. When a body decomposes in contact with the ground, it creates what researchers call a “cadaver decomposition island,” a zone of soil where nutrient levels spike dramatically. Work at the Texas State facility has shown that some soil chemicals, like certain nitrogen compounds and dissolved carbon, peak early in decomposition and then return to normal levels. Others, including dissolved organic carbon, phosphate, sodium, and potassium, remain elevated for years after death, with some compounds still measurably above background levels nearly five years after placement.³ This kind of data is useful not just for estimating time since death but for locating clandestine graves where human remains may have been removed or have fully decomposed.

Microbial research is another growing field. The microbial communities in soil beneath a decomposing body change in predictable ways over time, following a pattern of succession that could eventually serve as a biological clock for estimating when someone died.⁴ This is still an emerging tool rather than a courtroom-ready technique, but the data coming out of body farms is making it increasingly viable.

Volatile organic compound (VOC) research has practical applications for training cadaver detection dogs. Studies have mapped the chemical profiles released during different stages of decomposition, including under unusual conditions like simulated building collapses. In one such experiment, human donors were placed in a debris field designed to mimic a collapsed structure, and the VOC profile changed detectably about two weeks after placement, information that can improve how search dogs are trained for disaster scenarios.⁵ Related work has analyzed the specific chemical signatures emitted by dry, weathered bones, which remain detectable even long after soft tissue is gone. Researchers identified nearly 300 distinct volatile compounds from bone samples alone, with aromatics and linear aliphatics being the most abundant classes.⁶

How Bodies Get There

Every body at a US decomposition facility is there through voluntary donation. The programs operate on the same general model as organ or whole-body donation programs at medical schools, with the key difference that donors consent specifically to outdoor placement rather than dissection in an anatomy lab. Most facilities accept pre-registration from living donors who fill out paperwork, and some also accept next-of-kin donations after death. In all cases, informed consent is required.

The demographics of donors tend to skew older, since most people who pre-register are making end-of-life plans. This creates a known limitation in the research: the data disproportionately reflects decomposition in older, often thinner individuals, while victims of violent crime span a wider age and body-mass range. Some facilities actively try to diversify their donor pool, but ethical considerations prevent them from being too aggressive in recruitment.

There is no cost to the donor’s family. The facility covers transport within a certain radius, though policies vary by institution. Once the research period is complete, which can range from months to years depending on the study, skeletal remains are typically cleaned, catalogued, and added to a teaching collection that serves forensic anthropology training for decades.

The Pig Question

Before body farms existed, and still in parts of the world where human decomposition facilities are not available, forensic researchers use pig carcasses as stand-ins for human bodies. Pigs are similar to humans in skin structure, body fat distribution, and torso size, which is why they became the default analogue. But the opening of human taphonomy facilities has enabled direct comparisons, and those comparisons have revealed genuine differences.

One study comparing pig and human decomposition side by side found that pigs lost mass faster than humans during early winter decomposition. Pigs lost about 75% of their mass in winter, while humans lost less than 50% over the same period. In summer, the gap narrowed, with both losing roughly 80%. Other standard scoring methods showed pigs and humans reaching similar endpoints in late decomposition but following different trajectories to get there.⁷ The practical upshot is that transferring data from pig studies to human cases requires real caution, particularly in cooler climates or during the early stages of decomposition.

The debate is not settled, though. A broad methodological review acknowledged the limitations of pig-based research but also argued that pigs retain significant advantages as research subjects: they are more readily available, can be used in larger sample sizes, and do not carry the same ethical and logistical constraints as human donors.⁸ Most researchers see the two as complementary rather than competing: pig studies for controlled experiments with large sample sizes, human studies for validating those findings and generating courtroom-ready data.

Body Farms Outside the United States

The concept has gone international. Australia opened its first facility, the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER), near Sydney in 2016. It operates on a model similar to the US facilities, using donated human remains for outdoor decomposition research in Australian soil and climate conditions. AFTER has already produced research on topics including the use of ground-penetrating radar to detect clandestine graves, a study that buried pig carcasses in configurations mimicking hidden burials and surveyed them over 20 months.⁴ Facilities have also been proposed or established in Canada, the Netherlands, and India, each responding to the same core problem: decomposition data from one climate does not reliably apply to another.

The international expansion underscores something that was implicit in the growth of the US network. Forensic science is deeply local in ways that are easy to underestimate. Two locations at the same latitude but with different soil types or rainfall patterns can produce measurably different decomposition outcomes. The push toward more facilities is not about prestige or academic competition. It is about filling in the map so that forensic evidence from any region rests on data from that region.

Visiting, Access, and Common Misconceptions

Body farms are not open to the public. They are secured research facilities, typically surrounded by fencing and often with restricted access even within the host university. This is partly for security (the remains are human, and the donors’ dignity must be maintained) and partly for scientific integrity (visitors would disturb ongoing experiments). Students and researchers at the host institution may have access with proper authorization, and law enforcement professionals can sometimes arrange training visits, but casual tours are not offered.

A common misconception is that body farms are enormous, dramatic-looking fields of remains. In reality, most are modest in size, sometimes just a few acres. The original Knoxville facility started very small. The Texas State facility is among the larger ones, partly because its open rangeland setting allows for spacing donors far apart to prevent cross-contamination of decomposition islands. But even the biggest US facility is a fenced research plot, not the sprawling landscape people sometimes imagine.

Another misconception involves the name. Patricia Cornwell popularized “body farm” as a phrase, but no facility officially uses it. Researchers tend to use “human taphonomy facility” or the specific acronym for their site. Some find the popular name sensationalist, though most accept it as shorthand that the public understands. The scientific term “taphonomy” itself just means the study of what happens to organisms after death, covering everything from decomposition chemistry to how bones weather and scatter over time.

3D Documentation and Emerging Technology

One area of innovation closely tied to body farm research is the use of photogrammetry and 3D scanning to document decomposition without physically disturbing remains. Traditional assessment relies on visual scoring systems and physical measurements, both of which require a researcher to approach and handle the remains. Newer approaches use handheld cameras to create detailed 3D models that can be measured remotely and archived for later analysis. Testing of photogrammetry techniques on human remains has shown that certain camera approaches can produce measurements with average differences of well under one percent compared to hand measurements, making them accurate enough for forensic use.⁹

This matters for body farms because repeated measurement of the same donor over weeks or months is central to the research. Every time someone walks into a decomposition plot to take measurements, they potentially disturb insect activity, soil conditions, and the microenvironment around the remains. Non-contact 3D scanning reduces that interference while also creating a permanent, shareable digital record. As the technology matures, it could allow researchers at different facilities to compare decomposition data more precisely across climates, building toward the kind of standardized, cross-regional dataset that forensic science has needed since Bass first realized his Knoxville data could not speak for the whole country.