GEOCHEMICAL LANDSCAPE STRATEGY IN MONITORING THE AREAS CONTAMINATED BY THE CHERNOBYL RADIONUCLIDES

The Chernobyl accident led to radionuclide contamination of vast areas that now need to be monitored; the development of a regional land use strategy is now needed. Landscape geochemistry enables us to structur e, classify and map the environmental factors responsible for the redi stribution of radionuclides (i.e. soil-forming rocks and soil properti es, vegetation cover, types of ground water migration, and vertical an d lateral geochemical barriers). Combined with land use information, r egional geochemical landscape maps serve as the basis to map in topose quence conditions of mass migration and accumulation in natural and cu ltivated landscapes. Such mapping makes it easier to choose representa tive monitoring sites. This type of mapping is also helpful to interre late and extrapolate the data already obtained on radionuclides' envir onmental migration for different groups of geochemical landscapes with similar types of contamination, migration and accumulation patterns. A geochemical landscape approach is demonstrated using the example of part of the Bryansk region (Russia), which is considerably contaminate d with Cs-134 and Cs-137.