A Novel Approach to Monitoring the Cs-137 Contamination of Forest Soils in Bavaria, Germany

Regarding the radioactive fission product Cs-137, particularly forest soils are hot spots of long-term contamination. Previous studies have indicated that monitoring should take account of the exceptional role of humus for Cs-137 mobility and bioavailability to effectively evaluate contamination patterns and to enhance future protection strategies in forests. As official programmes in Bavaria lack such considerations, a new monitoring project has been established together with the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Public Health, focussing on humus-controlling landscape parameters (relief, vegetation etc.) as crucial core criteria. Comprising a total of 48 sites, the project provides a solid base for future research. Both the site selection process and first results are presented here

Foraminifera iodine to calcium ratios: approach and cleaning

Planktic and benthic foraminiferal iodine (I) to calcium (Ca) molar ratios have been proposed as an exciting new proxy to assess subsurface and bottom water oxygenation in the past. Compared to trace metals, the analysis of iodine in foraminiferal calcite is more challenging, as iodine is volatile in acid solution. Here, we compare previous analyses that use tertiary amine with alternative analyses using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) and ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) to stabilize iodine in solution. In addition, we assess the effect of sample size and cleaning on planktic and benthic foraminiferal I/Ca. Our stabilization experiments with TMAH and NH4OH show similar trends as those using tertiary amine, giving relatively low I/Ca ratios for planktic and benthic foraminifera samples from poorly oxygenated waters, and high ratios for well-oxygenated waters. This suggests that both alternative methods are suitable to stabilize iodine initially dissolved in acid. Samples that contain 5–10 specimens show a wide spread in I/Ca. Samples containing 20 specimens or more show more centered I/Ca values, indicating that a larger sample size is more representative of the average planktic foraminifera community. The impact of cleaning on planktic and benthic foraminifera I/Ca ratios is very similar to Mg/Ca, with the largest effect occurring during the clay removal step. The largest iodine contaminations were recorded at locations characterized by moderate to high organic carbon contents. In those circumstances, we recommend doubling the oxidative cleaning steps (4 instead of 2 repetitions) to ensure that all organic material is removed

Planktic foraminiferal I/Ca, Fe/Ca, Al/Ca and Mg/Ca ratios in core top samples from cleaning experiments and iodine stabalization experiments

Planktic and benthic foraminifera iodine (I) to calcium (Ca) molar ratios have been proposed as an exciting new proxy to assess subsurface and bottom water oxygenation in the past. Compared to trace metals, the analysis of iodine in foraminifera calcite is more challenging, as iodine is volatile in acid solution. Here we compare previous analyses that use tertiary amine with alternative analyses using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) and ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH). In addition, we assess the effect of sample size and cleaning on planktic and benthic foraminiferal I/Ca. Our stabilization experiments with TMAH and NH4OH show similar trends as those using tertiary amine, giving relatively low I/Ca ratios for planktic and benthic foraminifera samples from locations with either poorly oxygenated subsurface waters or bottom waters, and high ratios for locations characterized by well oxygenated subsurface or bottom waters. This suggests that both alternative methods are suitable to stabilize iodine initially dissolved in acid. In terms of number of planktic foraminifera analyzed, our results show a wide spread in I/Ca when samples contain 5 to 10 specimens. Samples containing 20 specimens or more show I/Ca values centered around the average of the smaller samples, indicated that the larger sample sizes are more representative of the average planktic foraminifera sample community. The impact of cleaning on planktic and benthic foraminifera I/Ca ratios is very similar to Mg/Ca, with the largest effect occurring during the clay removal step. Largest iodine contaminations were recorded at locations characterized by moderate to high organic carbon contents. We recommend doubling the oxidative cleaning step (4 instead of 2 steps) to ensure that all organic material is removed

Planktic foraminiferal I/Ca, Fe/Ca, Al/Ca and Mg/Ca ratios in core top samples from cleaning experiments

Planktic and benthic foraminifera iodine (I) to calcium (Ca) molar ratios have been proposed as an exciting new proxy to assess subsurface and bottom water oxygenation in the past. Compared to trace metals, the analysis of iodine in foraminifera calcite is more challenging, as iodine is volatile in acid solution. Here we compare previous analyses that use tertiary amine with alternative analyses using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) and ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH). In addition, we assess the effect of sample size and cleaning on planktic and benthic foraminiferal I/Ca. Our stabilization experiments with TMAH and NH4OH show similar trends as those using tertiary amine, giving relatively low I/Ca ratios for planktic and benthic foraminifera samples from locations with either poorly oxygenated subsurface waters or bottom waters, and high ratios for locations characterized by well oxygenated subsurface or bottom waters. This suggests that both alternative methods are suitable to stabilize iodine initially dissolved in acid. In terms of number of planktic foraminifera analyzed, our results show a wide spread in I/Ca when samples contain 5 to 10 specimens. Samples containing 20 specimens or more show I/Ca values centered around the average of the smaller samples, indicated that the larger sample sizes are more representative of the average planktic foraminifera sample community. The impact of cleaning on planktic and benthic foraminifera I/Ca ratios is very similar to Mg/Ca, with the largest effect occurring during the clay removal step. Largest iodine contaminations were recorded at locations characterized by moderate to high organic carbon contents. We recommend doubling the oxidative cleaning step (4 instead of 2 steps) to ensure that all organic material is removed