The study is aimed at identifying patterns in distribution of pollutants in the elementary landscape-geochemical systems (ELGS) of the temperate zone. The study used 137Cs as a tracer, which allows a highly detailed analysis of the nature of the heterogeneity of secondary migration in the toposequence: summit-slope-closing depression, treated as the elementary landscape-geochemical system. The study site was located in the Bryansk region in the Chernobyl abandoned area with an initial level of 137Cs contamination exceeding 1480 kBq/m2 (40 Ci/km2). An original technique of repeated 137Cs measurements along cross-sections accompanied by topographic survey and soil cores sampling has been applied. The obtained results showed a complete absence of constant increase of 137Cs concentration downslope but revealed a steady regular variability of 137Cs activity of a cyclical type. Given uniformity of the initial 137Cs fallout within a small-sized plot, variation of 137Cs due to its secondary distribution in ELGS was 2-2.7-fold according to field gamma-spectrometry data which corresponded to the radionuclide contamination density of the top 20-cm layer of the soil containing 96-99% of the total radionuclide amount (correlation between the parameters equaled to r0.01 = 0.782, n = 20). A specifically regular structure obviously formed under the set of radionuclide water migration processes seems to be inherent in all systems of the studied type. The results obtained are believed to be of both theoretical and practical importance, since they can contribute to making decisions on the precise monitoring of zones of technogenic accumulation, as well as solving fundamental problems of soil formation and its restoration after technogenic pollution.
Keywords: 137Cs; Elementary landscape-geochemical systems; Spatial regularity; Technogenic contamination.
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