Quantitative assessment of radiocaesium bioavailability in forest soils

A method for quantitative characterisation of the radiocaesium availability to plants in forest ecosystems has been developed. For this purpose an exp ression has been proposed to calculate the radiocaesium availability factor in soils, which is a combination of key soil characteristics: radiocaesium exchangeability, exchangeable calcium in soil and effective selectivity co efficient. The experimental dependencies of the radiocaesium soil to plant concentration factors for fern and bilberry, on the availability factor cal culated by the above equation were satisfactory described by linear functio n. The advantage of this method to characterise bioavailability of radiocae sium and to estimate site-specific values of concentration factor is that t he necessary soil characteristics may be taken from the reference literatur e, evaluated by experts or determined with a simple experimental procedure. The method can be used in development of a radioecological Geographic Info rmation Systems.