Transport of the environmental radionuclides in an alpine watershed

Details Transport of the environmental radionuclides in an alpine watershed Transport of the environmental radionuclides in an alpine watershed

Jul 1987

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1987e%26psl..84..165d&link_type=abstract

Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 84, Issue 2-3, p. 165-180.

Mathematics

Logic

12

Scientific paper

The radionuclides 137Cs, 210Pb and 7Be have been examined in the alpine Rhône watershed (Switzerland) during a period of two years in order to evaluate their usefulness as tracers of the removal and transport rate of top-soil particles and particle-reactive contaminants of atmospheric origin. The specific activities of the radionuclides in fluvial suspension show a distinct seasonal pattern which depends on the hydrologic regime of the stream and the sources of the suspended matter. Input-output budgets based on the atmospheric deposition and fluvial removal of three radionuclides in the alpine Rhône watershed are used to estimate their erosional residence times. The simplest one box model yields mean residence times of about 800 and 1400 years for 137Cs and 210Pb, respectively. The removal rate of short-lived 7Be suggests that a part of the watershed (0.6-2.3% of the total surface) is exposed to a rapid erosion, in which the mean residence time of the radionuclides is in the range of 1-220 days. This has little influence on the calculated residence time of 137Cs but increases the estimated residence time of 210Pb in soil to over 1800 years. The use of 210Pb-7Be pair in fluvial output may be very helpful in the assessment of the impact of atmospheric pollutants on the water quality in rivers and lakes.

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