Soil Sampling When Examining Forests for Radioactive Contamination

Forest ecosystems are complex areas in terms of rehabilitation of radioactively contaminated areas, so conducting an up-to-date examination of these areas for radioactive contamination is relevant. The paper considers the improvement of methods of soil sampling for obtaining representative materials in the estimation of vertical migration of 137Cs in the soil profile and the level of soil contamination with 137Cs. The density of radioactive soil contamination was studied by reducing the number of selected samples from 30 to 3 in the layers of 10, 20, and 30 cm. The results show that when the number of soil samples decreases, the average magnitudes of soil contamination with 137Cs are not significantly different within each analyzed layer. It was noted that at sampling in the 10-centimeter layer, the studied indicator was 1.3–1.4 times lower than in the layers of 20 and 30 cm, and there is no difference between the latter. To obtain reliable levels of radioactive contamination of the territory, it is necessary to perform 10-time repeated sampling in the forest soil layer of 30 cm. At a decrease in the number of soil samples from 10 to 3, the fluctuation of average values of the specific activity of 137Cs in different layers of soil profile is low. To obtain representative magnitudes of 137Cs content in each layer of the soil profile, it is necessary to make various samplings. Thus, for 4-time repeated sampling, is sufficient for all layers of forest litter, and 6-time repeated sampling is enough for the humus-eluvial horizon. It is necessary to perform 8-time repeated sampling for the eluvial and illuvial horizon, and 10-time repeated sampling for illuvial sand and parent rock. The obtained results make it possible to carry out up-to-date examination of forests for radioactive contamination based on the updated methodology and using the obtained data on 137Cs migration in forest soil