Applications and limitations of chernobyl radiocaesium measurements in a carpathian erosion investigation, Poland

✍ Scribed by D. L. Higgitt; W. Froehlich; D. E. Walling

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 977 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1085-3278
• DOI: 10.1002/ldr.3400030103

✦ Synopsis

The bomb-test fallout radionuclide caesium-137, has found increasing application in geomorphological investigations of soil erosion. Comparatively little work has investigated the potential for using 134Cs and 137Cs derived from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Results are reported from an agricultural foothill environment in the Beskidy Mountains of southern Poland. The high degree of spatial variability associated with Chernobyl fallout deposition poses considerable limitations on the potential for using radiocaesium measurements to elucidate detailed patterns of soil loss. Despite this problem, the redistribution of radiocaesium from field plots to terrace edges suggests a means for estimating the overall budgets for sediment transfer on cultivated slopes.