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Agricultural Erosion Indicated by ¹³⁷Cs Redistribution: I. Levels and Distribution of ¹³⁷Cs Activity in Soils¹

ABSTRACT

Modern agricultural erosion was studied using ¹³⁷Cs fallout as an indicator of erosion and sedimentation in the hilly margin of the Willamette Valley, Ore. Objectives of this phase of the study were (i) to identify areas most severely eroded over the period of fallout (since early 1954), and (ii) to identify areas that had been subject to net deposition over the same period.

Along each of eight transects, sampling sites were selected in ridgetop, steep sideslope, and concave footslope positions. Also sampled were a single convex ridge shoulder, a high ridgetop, two alluvial fans, two floodplain sites, and two sites in an 8-year-old pond. Soil cores were collected at each site and analyzed by depth increment for ¹³⁷Cs activity.

Depth distribution patterns of ¹³⁷Cs activity suggested that fallout ¹³⁷Cs was retained in surface soils and was, therefore, a good tracer in erosion/sediment studies. Depositional sites tended to have overthickened ¹³⁷Cs profiles and high total contents of ¹³⁷Cs. Average total ¹³⁷Cs activity in depositional sites was about 12 pCi/cm².

Sideslopes and ridgetops, with average total ¹³⁷Cs activities of about 8 pCi/cm², were indistinguishahle from each other. Failure to distinguish sideslopes from ridgetops based on ¹³⁷Cs signature was attributed to (i) widespread runoff from these lands, (ii) damping effects of plowing and continuing input of fallout ¹³⁷Cs, and (iii) an apparent lack of erosion severe enough to have depleted preferentially the ¹³⁷Cs-rich surface soils of sideslopes.

¹ Contribution from the Oregon Agric. Exp. Stn., Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR 97331, Technical Paper no. 5,752; and from the Environmental Sci. Div., Oak Ridge National Lab., Oak Ridge, TN 37830, Publication no. 1,784.

² Formerly Graduate Research Assistant, Dep. of Soil Sci., Oregon State Univ., now Assistant Professor, Soil Sci. Dep., Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611; Manager, ORNL Low Level Waste Management Program, Environmental Sci. Div., Oak Ridge National Lab.; and Assistant Professor, Dep. of Soil Sci., Oregon State Univ.

Received for publication April 27, 1981. Accepted for publication July 27, 1981.

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