Determining the spatial scale of variation in soil radon concentration

Increasing concern about possible links between emissions of radon and certain types of malignant disease has led to local and regional surveys to measure radon concentrations in the soil and in dwellings. The spatial scale at which radon varies is largely unknown, and so efficient sampling schemes and methods of mapping cannot be selected. To determine the spatial scale of radon variation in the English Midlands rue measured radon in the soil using solid-state nuclear track detection in three areas of different geological complexity. In two of them,ve used an unbalanced multistage sampling scheme with seven stages of nesting: the Hereford survey covered distances from 10 m to 7.5 km, and the Buxton survey distances from 1 m to 3.75 km. The results from the nested surveys suggested that geology exerts a strong control on the variation. Finally radon was measured every 20 m along a 2-km long transect which crossed several lithologies close to Nottingham. The soil radon values changed in an erratic way along the transect. The sample variogram of radon has a substantial nugget variance, suggesting that much of the variation occurred for distances less than the sampling interval. The structure at the longer scale seems to be controlled by the underlying geology. These results have implications for designing further surveys and for selecting a method of mapping. Stratification based on lithology might be the only feasible solution to sampling, estimating and mapping radon concentrations over large areas. Where the locally erratic component of variation is large, estimation by kriging, for example, would confer little additional benefit compared with that by classification.