Environmental Modelling at Nottingham
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Radiocaesium soil-plant transfer ('Absalom Model') Radiocaesium soil to plant uptake is highly variable. There is a large variation in soil-plant transfer factors between different types of plant and for different soil conditions. There have been attempts to develop empirical multiple regression models to describe this variation. However these have had limited success. We believe that it is possible to make useful predictions of soil-plant transfer which take into account readily measureable soil characteristics (pH, clay content, OM content, exchangeable K) using a semi-empirical approach. This work was led by Jon Absalom and therefore the resulting models are known locally as the 'The Absalom Model'. More recent work is suggesting that a simpler version of the model than that published (which does not have pH as an input) may perform as well, or perhaps even better. However this work is on-going and nothing is yet published.
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Our first effort with this model is described in the paper below, however this is really superceded by the subsequent 2001 paper: Absalom JP, Young SD, Crout NMJ, Nisbet AF, Woodman RFM, Smolders E, Gillet AG (1999). Predicting soil to plant transfer of radiocesium using soil characteristics. Environmental Science and Technology,33:1218-1223. The current version of the model is fully described in: Absalom JP, Young SD, Crout NMJ, Sanchez AL, Wright SM, Smolders E, Nisbet A, Gillett AG. (2001) Predicting the transfer of radiocaesium from organic soils to plants using soil characteristics. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 52:31-43 We have an excel version of the model which can be downloaded. It contains some explanatory notes. |