Evaluation of contribution rate of the infiltrated water collected using zero-tension lysimeter to the downward migration of 137 Cs derived from the FDNPP accident in a cedar forest soil.

The vertical distribution of ¹³⁷ Cs in forest soil is important for predicting air dose rates and future cycling in forest ecosystems. However, there are many unexplained questions about the mechanisms of its downward migration. In this study, the ¹³⁷ Cs flux by rainfall infiltration was observed for three years from August 2017 using zero-tension lysimeters in a mature cedar forest where monitoring of the vertical distribution of ¹³⁷ Cs has been conducted since 2011. As a result, the ¹³⁷ Cs concentration in infiltrated water through the litter layer, 5 cm and 10 cm showed a tendency to be high in summer, but no such seasonal variation was found at 20 cm. Although the ¹³⁷ Cs inventory in the litter layer has been exponentially decreasing, the annual ¹³⁷ Cs fluxes in infiltrated water through the litter layer were almost the same in three years, and about 0.14-0.17% of the deposition density of ¹³⁷ Cs. Comparing these ¹³⁷ Cs fluxes with the apparent amounts of downward migration of ¹³⁷ Cs estimated from the change in the vertical distribution of ¹³⁷ Cs, the contribution rate of the infiltrated water to downward migration of ¹³⁷ Cs from litter to soil was calculated to be 8.5-17.7%. Similarly, the contribution rate in mineral soil layers was calculated to be 0.6-0.8% on a measured basis and estimated to be 3.0 ± 0.2% after correcting the amount of collected water, which is a problem with zero-tension lysimeter. It indicates that rainfall infiltration can explain a small part of the downward migration of ¹³⁷ Cs, thus further studies are required to clarify the contribution rate of remaining mechanisms such as advection-diffusion, colloidal transport, physical mixing, bioturbation, and growth and death of plant roots.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)