Soil and vegetation radionuclide activity concentrations and calculated dose rates from the Red Forest, Chernobyl, Ukraine, 2016-2017

Published by:
Environmental Information Data Centre
Last updated:
16 February 2023
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
Other Licence
View licence information

Summary

Data comprise plot details and radionuclide activity concentrations for Sr-90, Cs-137, Am-241, Pu-238, Pu-239 and Pu-240 in ‘grassy’ vegetation and soil. These radionuclide activity concentrations have been used to make estimations of total weighted absorbed doses to grassy vegetation, deciduous trees and bacteria; no dose rate estimates for grassy vegetation have been made for those sites where grassy vegetation was absent. Radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident killed coniferous trees in a 4-6 km2 area of forest to the west of the power plant. This area is now known as the 'Red Forest’ and it has subsequently regenerated with understorey vegetation and deciduous trees; it is the most anthropogenically contaminated radioactive ecosystem on Earth. In July 2016 a severe fire burnt (to varying degrees) c. 80 percent of the Red Forest; this presented a unique opportunity to study the impact of radiation on the recovery of forest ecosystems exposed to a secondary stressor (fire). To investigate this, in September 2017 the RED FIRE project set up sixty study plots in the Red Forest (in burnt and unburnt areas) with a further nine plots established close to Buriakivka village (approximately 8 km from the Red Forest). Vegetation samples from each plot were harvested using shears in September 2017. Each sample was sorted into ‘grassy’ and ‘other’ vegetation; these were air-dried (20-25 degrees Celsius) and the grassy vegetation samples homogenised prior to radionuclide analyses. Soil core samples collected in September 2017 were bulked, homogenised and sub-samples taken for determination of pH and percentage moisture determined by oven drying (approximately 60 degrees Celsius) to a constant mass. The remaining soil sample was used for the determination of radionuclide activity concentrations; prior to analyses, these samples were dried at approximately 80 degrees Celsius. This work was funded by the NERC, Grant Ref: NE/P015212/1 (RED FIRE: Radioactive Environment Damaged by fire: a Forest In Recovery) Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/60782622-7bfa-4615-a9e3-0a802a9f4674

More from this publisher

All datasets from Environmental Information Data Centre

Related datasets

Search

Data links

Link to the data Format File added Data preview
Supporting information ZIP 16 February 2023 Not available
Download the data N/A 16 February 2023 Not available

Additional information

View additional metadata
Added to data.gov.uk
2022-08-24T15:34:30
Access contraints
If you reuse this data, you should cite: Barnett, C.L., Gashchak, S., Maksimenko, A. , Chaplow, J.S., Wood, M.D. , Beresford, N.A. (2021). Soil and vegetation radionuclide activity concentrations and calculated dose rates from the Red Forest, Chernobyl, Ukraine, 2016-2017. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/60782622-7bfa-4615-a9e3-0a802a9f4674
Harvest GUID
60782622-7bfa-4615-a9e3-0a802a9f4674
Extent
Latitude: 51.415° to 51.342°
Longitude: 30.001° to 30.091°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
2021-02-26 (publication)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (pointOfContact, author, owner); Chernobyl Centre for Nuclear Safety (author); University of Salford (author); NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre (custodian); NERC Environmental Information Data Centre (publisher)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

Contact

Enquiries

Environmental Information Data Centre

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology enquiry service Freedom of information requests for this dataset

Licence information

[]