Elsevier

Pedosphere

Volume 21, Issue 1, February 2011, Pages 37-45
Pedosphere

137Cs Redistribution in Thin Stony Soil of a Carbonate Rock Slope in Southwest China

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1002-0160(10)60077-XGet rights and content

Abstract

The fallout radionuclide cesium-137 (137Cs) has been widely employed as a tracer for assessment of soil loss from thick uniform soils; however, few studies have been conducted on thin stony soils on slopes underlain by carbonate rocks which are widely distributed in karst areas. Information derived from 137Cs measurement of soil samples collected along a carbonate rock slope with thin stony soil where neither soil erosion nor deposition occurred was used to investigate the characteristics of 137Cs redistribution in a karst area of Southwest China. The results indicated that the 137Cs inventories of the surface soil on the slope studied were much lower than that of the local 137Cs reference inventory and the 137Cs activities were much higher than those on slopes with thick uniform soils. The spatial distribution of 137Cs inventories was characterized by considerable variation. The high 137Cs depletion in the stony soil of the slope studied was mainly because a considerable proportion of the fallout input of 137Cs could be lost with runoff and the dissolution of carbonate particles in the soil promoted the loss of 137Cs. These demonstrated that the rates of soil loss could not be estimated from the degree of depletion of the 137Cs inventory relative to the local reference inventory for the thin stony soil of the rocky slope underlain by carbonate rocks in the study area in the way that has been widely used in areas with thick uniform soils.

References (26)

  • M.F. Guimaraes et al.

    Application of cesium-137 in a study of soil erosion and deposition in southeastern Brazil

    Soil Sci.

    (2003)
  • A.B. Hird et al.

    Factors affecting the sorption and fixation of caesium in acid organic soil

    Eur. J. Soil Sci.

    (1996)
  • F.R. Livens et al.

    The influence of soil properties on the environmental mobility of caesium in Cumbria

    Soil Use Manage.

    (1988)
  • Cited by (7)

    • Refined revealing the chain path of multiple ecosystem services under diverse environmental factor gradients

      2023, Science of the Total Environment
      Citation Excerpt :

      When the soil type was stony, the mediation effect of soil moisture on NPP directly affecting surface runoff was greater than that of surface runoff on NPP directly affecting sediment yield in the SRB. In the stony soil area with exposed surface rocks, shallow soil layer, and poor water retention, the mediation effect of surface runoff was small, but the mediation effect of soil moisture was more significant (Danalatos et al., 1995; Li et al., 2011). As for the forest, the effect of soil moisture as the mediation variable on NPP directly affecting surface runoff in the SRB was greater than the effect of surface runoff as the mediation variable on NPP directly affecting sediment yield.

    • Distributions of fallout <sup>137</sup>Cs, <sup>239+240</sup>Pu and <sup>241</sup>Am in a soil core from South Central China

      2022, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity
      Citation Excerpt :

      The 137Cs activity concentration ranged from 2.66 ± 0.20 mBq/g to 15.45 ± 0.76 mBq/g with an average of 8.40 ± 0.47 mBq/g (137Cs decay corrected to the sampling date). Zhao et al. (2012) measured the 137Cs activity concentrations in soil samples taken from the Jing-Jin-Ji Region in North China, and found that the activity concentration of 137Cs in surface soils in the region of study fluctuated within 0.3 ± 0.1 to 12.9 ± 0.4 mBq/g with an average value of 3.7 mBq/g. Hao et al. (2011) reported the 137Cs activity concentration in soils from Guangxi Province in South China ranged from <2 mBg/g to 24.7 mBq/g (137Cs decay corrected to the sampling date in November 2006). The 137Cs activity concentrations we found in Hunan Province were comparable to those detected in the Jing-Jin-Ji Region in North China and in Guanxi Province.

    • Soil functions and ecosystem services research in the Chinese karst Critical Zone

      2019, Chemical Geology
      Citation Excerpt :

      In order to achieve this, it is necessary to improve knowledge and understanding of the distribution of silicate minerals in interbedded silicate clastic rocks or as impurities in carbonate rocks in the CZ, and quantify the variation in long-term mineral nutrient release exercised by the distribution of silicate minerals. Despite the magnitude of landscape degradation in southwest China, there are still very few studies that comprehensively assess soil erosion within the karst environments of the region (Chen et al., 2011b; Li et al., 2011; Yang et al. 2011; Peng and Wang, 2012; Feng et al., 2016; Huang et al., 2016). Rocky desertification is evidence that soil is being lost at rates far in excess of replacement from the characteristic sloping topography (5–25°; Wang et al., 2004b; Huang and Cai, 2007; Jiang et al., 2009).

    • Use of anthropogenic radioisotopes to estimate rates of soil redistribution by wind I: Historic use of <sup>137</sup>Cs

      2013, Aeolian Research
      Citation Excerpt :

      Some investigators claim that variability of precipitation infiltration caused by circulation patterns, rain shadowing, runon/runoff processes, and snow drift at the time of radioisotope deposition may affect the spatial patterns (de Jong et al., 1982; Kiss et al., 1988; Wallbrink and Murray, 1996; Parsons and Foster, 2011). It has been recently suggested that in skeletal soils on steep slopes, the use of radioisotopes to estimate redistribution rates may be of limited utility due to rapid runoff and limited incorporation of radioisotopes during the years of fallout deposition (Zhang et al., 2011). Other investigators have found that the variability of radioisotope inventories in sites meeting the requirements for a good reference site are random and not related to landscape position (Pennock et al., 1994; Sutherland, 1994; Owens and Walling, 1996).

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Supported by the Western Action Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KZCX2-XB2-08) and the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (No. 2006CB403200)

    View full text