Radioecologically critical ecosystems and their role in contamination of agricultural production

Abstract

Environmental monitoring and environmental safety monitoring are among the priorities of the Strategy of the State Environmental Policy of Ukraine for the period up to 2020. Therefore, radiation monitoring in the agrarian sector as the main source of regular systematic and organizational information on the radionuclides spatial redistribution and their migration intensity by trophic chains is of particular importance. After all, the consumption of contaminated agricultural products remains the main source of radionuclides in the human body, which determines the main dose of exposure to the population. The research involves the use of information-analytical, radioecological (radioecological and dosimetric studies), mathematical-statistical methods. Own researches data, public data of the national information base (statistical and stock data), regulations, electronic and printed scientific and reference materials, both domestic and foreign, published results of radiological investigations on the Ukrainian Polissya, etc. were used in the paper. The main factors that influence the radionuclides redistribution in the ecosystem elements and the significance of radionuclide excretion beyond the boundaries have been identified and analyzed. It is established that the common feature of all the critical ecosystems of the Ukrainian Polissya agrolandscapes is a significant impact of both soil (soil type, soil acidity, humus content, etc.) and phytocoenoses characteristics (species and varieties composition, age, stage of plant development, etc.). Analysis of the data obtained from observation of the radionuclides content in different soils types and their incorporation by plants in the radioactive contamination area as a result of the Chernobyl accident has revealed the uneven pace of reduction of the radionuclide accumulation by plants from different soils types. Such uneven decline rates are due to peat and peat-soils high degree of wetting.