Deposition of atmospheric 137Cs in Japan associated with the Asian dust event of March 2002

NDVI-Based Long-Term Vegetation Dynamics and Its Response to Climatic Change in the Mongolian Plateau

“…The GIMMS NDVI and MODIS NDVI together cover the period from 1982 to 2010. The GIMMS NDVI dataset was produced by the Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling studies group using the NOAA/AVHRR series satellites (NOAA 7,9,11,14,16,17,and 18) data at a spatial resolution of 8 km and a 15-day interval for the period from 1982 to 2006 [31]. This dataset is famous for its high quality, having been corrected to remove some non-vegetation effects caused by solar angle and sensor errors, and has been widely used to monitor long-term trends in vegetation activity from regional to global scales [8,28].…”

“…From another perspective, this deterioration of both climate and vegetation in the plateau since the mid-or late 1990s could have aggravated the frequency of sandstorm occurrence and desertification [20]. Recent studies have suggested that the frequency of sandstorms affecting northern China and East Asia has significantly increased since 2000 [16,17], which is most probably related to the NDVI decline and drought except for the occurrence of strong winds in the plateau. Vegetation decline-associated desertification has also been a noteworthy environmental problem in recent years [43].…”

“…The northern part of the plateau is in the Republic of Mongolia, and the southern part is in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China [14,15]. Previous studies have suggested that the sandstorms that affected northeastern Asia around 2000 most probably originated from the central and southern parts of the plateau [16,17]; that sandstorm frequency tends to increase with increases in drought stress [18,19]; and that vegetation decline in some parts of the plateau contributed to an increase in sandstorms [17,20]. However, very few studies have demonstrated where in the plateau this vegetation decline occurred and when and why it occurred.…”

The Simulation of long-range transport of 137Cs by yellow sand phenomena in East Asia

“…The source area of 1500km x 1500km includes the measurement area of 137 Cs centered at 113 degrees longitude and 42 degrees latitude. The 137 Cs in the soil was rich in farm land and grass land but 137 Cs was not detected in desert areas 5) . For this study, the source was divided into a 30km x 30km mesh.…”

Change of the Asian dust source region deduced from the composition of anthropogenic radionuclides in surface soil in Mongolia

“…In addition, the possibility of an eastward expansion of the source of Asian dust was suggested by Kurosaki and Mikami (2003) and Lim and Chun (2006) and later confirmed by Kim (2008). We have been investigating features of the continental and local dust sources using 90 Sr and 137 Cs, which are anthropogenic radionuclides contained in the surface soil with half-lives of 30 years (Igarashi, 2004(Igarashi, , 2009aIgarashi et al, 2001Igarashi et al, , 2005Igarashi et al, , 2006Igarashi et al, , 2009Fukuyama and Fujiwara, 2008;Fujiwara, 2010;Fujiwara et al, 2007).…”