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TECHNICAL REPORTS

Landscape and Watershed Processes

Pulsed Redistribution of a Contaminant Following Forest Fire

Cesium-137 in Runoff

^a 528 35th Street, Los Alamos, NM 87544
^b Department of Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523
^c Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mail Stop J495, Los Alamos, NM 87545

^* Corresponding author (Mjohansen{at}doeal.gov).

Received for publication August 20, 2002. Of the natural processes that concentrate dispersed environmental contaminants, landscape fire stands out as having potential to rapidly concentrate contaminants and accelerate their redistribution. This study used rainfall simulation methods to quantify changes in concentration of a widely dispersed environmental contaminant (global fallout ¹³⁷Cs) in soils and surface water runoff following a major forest fire at Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA. The ¹³⁷Cs concentrations at the ground surface increased up to 40 times higher in ash deposits and three times higher for the topmost 50 mm of soil compared with pre-fire soils. Average redistribution rates were about one order of magnitude greater for burned plots, 5.96 KBq ha^-1 mm^-1 rainfall, compared with unburned plots, 0.55 KBq ha^-1 mm^-1 rainfall. The greatest surface water transport of ¹³⁷Cs, 11.6 KBq ha^-1 mm^-1, occurred at the plot with the greatest amount of ground cover removal (80% bare soil) following fire. Concentration increases of ¹³⁷Cs occurred during surface water erosion, resulting in enrichment of ¹³⁷Cs levels in sediments by factors of 1.4 to 2.9 compared with parent soils. The elevated concentrations in runoff declined rapidly with time and cumulative precipitation occurrence and approached pre-fire levels after approximately 240 mm of rainfall. Our results provide evidence of order-of-magnitude concentration increases of a fallout radionuclide as a result of forest fire and rapid transport of radionuclides following fire that may have important implications for a wide range of geophysical, ecosystem, fire management, and risk-based issues.

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