Is it possible to use Sr-90 and Cs-137 as tracers for the aeolian dust transport?

A noble approach for the estimation of the deposition of the Asian dust ove r Japan by using atmospheric anthropogenic radioactivity, Sr-90 and Cs-137, is proposed. Those radioactivities once deposited globally onto the ground by the past nuclear test, etc. are resuspended along with the surface soil particles in the air by the storm and deposited again on the ground. The d ifference in Cs-137/Sr-90 activity ratios in the surface soil between dry a nd wet climatic conditions gives a clue to know about the source of the dus t. It was found that the average activity ratio in the deposited material ( average: 2.1, n=82) at MRI, Tsukuba in the 1990s is not close to that of th e surface soil taken in neighborhood (median: 6.8, n=8), which had been con sidered as the primary source. While, it is close to that of the soil sampl es taken in the and area in the Asian continent (median: 2.0, n=4), which i s the one of the source regions of the aeolian dust. Thus we can reasonably assume that deposited dust in Tsukuba is brought not only from the neighbo ring fields, etc. but also from the and area in the continent. Using a simp le two-component model it was estimated that the Asian dust may transport a bout 90% of Sr-90 and 70% of Cs-137 depositions observed in Tsukuba in the 1990s. Also, Asian dust may transport about 2/3 of the dust deposited in Ts ukuba.