Regional Calibration of Erosion Radiotracers (²¹⁰Pb and ¹³⁷Cs):  Atmospheric Fluxes to Soils (Northern Spain)

Abstract

Inventories of radionuclides commonly used to study environmental processes, especially in erosion research, were determined in soil cores from two distant river basins in northern Spain. Results showed that 210Pb atmospheric fluxes correlate very well with mean annual rainfall across the region, and this is also the case for 137Cs inventories but only on the basin scale. Therefore we suggest that 210Pb is a better candidate as a radiotracer for soil erosion studies. In this region, the equation 210Pb flux (Bq m(-2) yr(-1)) = (0.19 +/- 0.02) x rainfall (mm yr(-1)) - (24 +/- 17) can be used as a calibration to estimate input 210Pb fluxes, a key parameter in soil erosion studies and models, when mean annual rainfall is known.

Deposition of artificial radionuclides from atmospheric Nuclear Weapon Tests estimated by soil inventories in French areas low-impacted by Chernobyl

“…Pourcelot et al, 2007;Sanchez-Cabeza et al, 2007, for a summary see table 2 in Sutherland, 1996). Our rain-deposition relationships for plutonium [ Fig.…”

Aerosol deposition and origin in French mountains estimated with soil inventories of 210Pb and artificial radionuclides

“…Assuming that there was no local source of R NWT in the continental boundary layer (Monaghan, 1989) and that any increase in 210 Pb/ R NWT is due to the deposition of 210 (Appleby, 2001). Also plotted samples from the Mediterranean Area (Garcia-Orellana et al, 2006;Preiss et al, 1996;Sanchez-Cabeza et al, 2007) and Scandinavia (Peter Appleby, personal communication Table 3 esi) and effects of occult deposition are surely different depending on the direction of the slope. In Montagne Noire, samples were collected in different sub-valleys along the southern slope side influenced by Mediterranean incoming wind (called ''Autan'').…”

Map on predicted deposition of Cs-137 in Spanish soils from geostatistical analyses

“…Studies of activity of 137 Cs in soil have been made in the Iberian Peninsula but at small-scale (Baeza et al, 2001;Gascó et al, 2006;Llauradó et al, 1994;Navas et al, 2005Navas et al, , 2007Sanchez-Cabeza et al, 2007;Soto and Navas, 2008). Data do not cover the whole territory except in the Legarda work (Legarda et al, 2011).…”