Soil-to-plant transfer of fallout caesium and strontium in Austrian lowland and Alpine pastures

The areal contamination, the depth distributions in the soil and the soil-to-plant transfer-factors were determined for 137Cs and 90Sr at four Austrian pastures. Two of these are intensively used lowland pastures at about 500 m above sea level, and the other two are Alpine pastures at 1600 and 1300 m. At the latter, the vertical migration velocity in the soil is slower and the soil-to-plant transfer is significantly higher than at the lowland pastures (for both nuclides). A strong positive correlation exists between the 137Cs and 90Sr soil-to-plant transfers, indicating that some of the parameters typical of Alpine environments have a similar effect on the plant uptake of these fallout nuclides, e.g. low biological activity in the soil and short vegetation periods