Assessing soil redistribution in a complex karst catchment using fallout 137Cs and GIS

Abstract

15Caesium-137 derived from nuclear testing in the past century has been widely used as a 16 sediment tracer of soil redistribution, providing information on medium term (40-50 17 years) erosion rates. To date, most studies have focused on individual fields of limited 18 extent, but estimated rates and patterns of soil redistribution require upscaling to 19 catchment level. An attempt to assess soil redistribution processes with strong 20 geomorphic control on complex terrain, such as an internally drained karstic catchment, 21 is presented in this work. A comprehensive geomorphological survey of the Estanya 22 Lake catchment (Spanish Pyrenees) enabled the main geomorphic elements to be 23 identified with a grid resolution of 5 x 5 m, which was the basis for the terrain analyses.

Estimating soil redistribution patterns with 137Cs measurements in a Mediterranean mountain catchment affected by land abandonment

“…Erosion rates need to be quantified to assess how relatively recent land use changes impacted on soil loss in Mediterranean agroecosystems. To date, there are only few studies using 137 Cs to quantify soil redistribution rates at catchment scale (Mabit & Bernard, ; Navas, López‐Vicente, Gaspar, & Machín, ; Porto, Walling, Ferro, & di Stefano, ). Furthermore, fewer studies investigated the impact of recent land use changes on soil erosion (Evrard et al, ; Gaspar & Navas, ; Gharibreza et al, ; Navas, López‐Vicente, Gaspar, Palazón, & Quijano, ).…”

Radiocesium contaminations of 20 wood species and the corresponding gamma-ray dose rates around the canopies at 5 months after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident

“…The observations of radionuclide dispersal were conducted not only for the neighboring district of Chernobyl (Tikhomirov and Scheglov, 1994;Fogh and Andersson, 2001;Sokolik et al, 2001;Ramzaev et al, 2006), but also for most parts of Europe, including Belgium (Ronneau et al, 1991;Sombré et al, 1994), Bulgaria (Zhiyanski et al, 2008), England (Bonnet and Anderson, 1993), France (Barci-Funel et al, 1995), Germany (Bunzl and Kracke, 1988), Greece (Clouvas et al, 2005), Spain (Navasa et al, 2012), and Sweden (Melin et al, 1994;Fawaris and Johanson, 1995;McGee et al, 2000;Belyazida et al, 2006). These observations not only provided information regarding the regional and local characteristics of the radionuclide distribution, but they also provided information related to the science associated with forest ecosystems/woody plants, such as plant physiology, meteorology, soil science and physico-chemistry, geomorphology, and radiology.…”

Assessment of soil redistribution at catchment scale by coupling a soil erosion model and a sediment connectivity index (central spanish pre-pyrenees)

“…However, these values are lower than other rates of soil loss calculated in similar cultivated landscapes of the Spanish Pre-Pyrenees, where erosion rates average ca. 5 Mg ha −1 yr −1 (Gaspar et al, 2013b;Navas et al, 2013). …”