[ RadSafe ] Chernobyl ecology meeting

[Muckerheide, James]

Friends,
 
This subject announcement may be of interest.

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
========================
i-Newswire.com: The ecological effects of the Chernobyl disaster

Press Release And News Distribution - 

  Nearly 20 years ago Reactor number 4 at Chernobyl exploded,
sending radiation across a large region of what is now the
Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Some 40 radionucleotides were
released into the environment, including Strontium 90 (90Sr) and
Cesium 137 (137Cs). Yet despite radiation levels dangerous to
humans, most natural areas in the region have rebounded, and by
ecological standards, are functioning normally. The session,
organized by James Morris and Timothy Mousseau (University of
South Carolina, US) will reveal how the environment has
responded -- from genetic mutation rates, to plant and animal
communities, to nutrient cycling.     

(I-Newswire) - Sergey Gaschak ( International Radioecology
Laboratory, Ukraine ) will open the session with his
presentation, "Determinants of levels of 90Sr and 137Cs in birds
in Chernobyl." Studying 228 birds of 23 different species
captured in Chernobyl, Gaschak and colleagues from the
University of South Carolina ( US ) and University Pierre et
Marie Curie ( France ) measured the birds' levels of radioactive
strontium and radioactive cesium, comparing migrating
populations with those that remain in the area, as well as
examining age, sex, and nesting preferences to determine the
amounts and types of radiation accumulating in the birds. In the
presentation, Gaschak will discuss how quantities of 90Sr and
137Cs vary with feeding, nesting and migration habits. 

Timothy Mousseau will present "Consequences of radiation for
reproduction and survival of barn swallows Hirundo rustica from
Chernobyl." Barn swallows are long-distance migratory birds,
which nest across Europe, providing researchers with numerous
populations to sample. Examining swallows from the Chernobyl
region and Kanev, southeast of Kiev, Mousseau and his colleague,
Anders Moller ( Laboratorie de Parasitologie Evolutive, France
), found reproductive success was significantly reduced for the
Chernobyl-nesting birds. Survival rates, number of eggs laid,
and overall body condition was lower, despite similar nesting
and laying dates. 

The radio nucleotides in the area also filter into the soil, and
from there into plants. Animals that consume these plants,
including livestock, then take up the radionucleotides. Viktor
Dolin ( National Academy of Sciences, Kyiv, Ukraine ) will
discuss a newly described process of environmental self-cleaning
in the talk, "Biogeochemical cycling of radionucleotide:
Implications for the human food web." Dolin calculated the rate
of 137Cs and 90Srs moving through the environment, then used the
data to determine an ecosystem's ability to "clean" itself of
excess radiation. 

Oleksander Orlov's ( Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute )
presentation, "The distribution and cycling of 137Cs in forests
of the Chernobyl exclusion zone," will focus on 137Cs levels in
three 50-year old Scotch Pine forests. Forest litter, moss,
lichens, understory, macromycetes, and canopy 137Cs activity
measurements will be described. Also working in these pine
forests, Vadim Skripkin and colleagues from the Institute for
Environmental Geochemistry, Ukraine and the University of South
Carolina will report their findings on the distribution of 14C
in, "The turnover of 14C carbon in forests of the Chernobyl
exclusion zone." 

The final presentation of the session, Ronald Chesser ( Texas
Tech University, US ) will describe the distribution and effects
of radiation doses that hit wildlife that were living in the
area at the time of the accident, as well as how the populations
recovered in the talk, "Temporal trends in radiation doses,
survival, and recovery in wildlife populations at Chernobyl." 

Organized Oral Session 7: "Ecological effects of the Chernobyl
disaster: Genes to ecosystems," will take place Monday 8 August
2005, 1:30 - 5:00 PM in Meeting Room 510 A, Level 5, Palais des
congrès de Montréal. 

For more information about this session and other ESA-INTECOL
Meeting activities, visit: <font
color=#80000>http://www.esa.org/montreal.</font>The theme of the
meeting is "Ecology at multiple scales," and some 4,000
scientists are expected to attend. 

Annie Drinkard
annie at esa.org
Ecological Society of America

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  Published on:   
  2005-08-14