Soil-to-plant transfer of fallout caesium and strontium in Austrian lowland and Alpine pastures

The areal contamination, the depth distributions in the soil and the soil-to-plant transfer-factors were determined for Cs-137 and Sr-90 at four Austrian pastures. Two of these are intensively used lowland pastures at about 500 m above sea level, and the other two are Alpine pastures at 1600 and 1300 m. At the latter, the vertical migration velocity in the soil is slower and the soil-to-plant transfer is significantly higher than at the lowland pastures (for both nuclides), A strong positive correlation exists between the Cs-137 and Sr-90 soil-to-plant transfers, indicating that some of the parameters typical of Alpine environments have a similar effect on the plant uptake of these fallout nuclides, e.g. low biological activity in the soil and short vegetation periods. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.