Forests in the East Ural Radioactive Trace: structure, spatial distribution, and the 90 Sr inventory 63 years after the Kyshtym accident

• Published in: Environmental monitoring and assessment Vol. 195; no. 6; p. 632
• Main Authors: Pozolotina, Vera N, Shalaumova, Yulia V, Lebedev, Vladimir A, Grigor'ev, Andrey A, Modorov, Makar V, Mikhaylovskaya, Ludmila N, Tarasov, Oleg V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands 02-05-2023
• Subjects: Accidents; Cesium Radioisotopes - analysis; Environmental Monitoring; Forests; Fukushima Nuclear Accident; Soil Pollutants, Radioactive - analysis; Soil contamination density; 90Sr inventory; Kyshtym accident; Age profile; Forest; Species profile; Aggregated transfer factor; Timber stock
• ISSN: 1573-2959

On 29 September 1957, the so-called Kyshtym accident occurred at the USSR's first nuclear weapons plutonium production facility. The East Ural State Reserve (EUSR) was established in the most contaminated part of the radioactive trace, where a substantial part of the forests died in the first years after the accident. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the natural restoration of forests and to verify and update the taxonomic parameters that characterize the current state of forest stands in the EUSR. Data on the forest inventory of 2003 and results of our research of 2020 performed by the same methods on 84 randomly selected sites served as the basis for this work. We developed models to approximate growth dynamics and then updated the 2003 taxation-related forest data for the entire EUSR. According to these models and ArcGIS construction of new data, forest-covered lands make up 55.8% of the whole EUSR territory. The proportion of birch forests in the forest-covered lands is 91.9%; 60.7% of wood resources are located in mature and overmature (81-120-year-old) birch forests. The total timber stock in the EUSR is > 1385 thousand tons. It was revealed that ~ 4.2 × 10
 Bq of
Sr is situated within the EUSR. The main stock of
Sr is found in soils. The
Sr stock in the stands is ~ 1.6-3.0% of the total content in the forests. Only a part of the EUSR forest stands can be used for practical applications.