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mrbluze writes:
"Rachel Nuwer from the Smithsonian Mag gives a good summary around a paper entitled "Highly reduced mass loss rates and increased litter layer in radioactively contaminated areas" (Oecologia, March 2014):
In the areas with no radiation, 70 to 90 percent of the leaves were gone after a year. But in places where more radiation was present, the leaves retained around 60 percent of their original weight.
... the Chernobyl area is at risk of fire, and 27 years' worth of leaf litter, (researcher) Mousseau and his colleagues think, would likely make a good fuel source for such a forest fire. This poses a more worrying problem than just environmental destruction: Fires can potentially redistribute radioactive contaminants to places outside of the exclusion zone, Mousseau says. 'There is growing concern that there could be a catastrophic fire in the coming years.'
A forest fire burning radioactive plant debris could be catastrophic. The Fukushima disaster is likely to have the same problems locally, but it poses additional risks because radioactive water continues to flow into the sea at an alarming rate, which will likely affect oceanic bacterial levels in a similar way."
(Score: 4, Informative) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:25PM
Er, that's what the article says, microbes and fungi.
An option would be to expose a range of fungi to the conditions in the exclusion zone and it's surroundings, see which ones are resilient enough to continue operating to some degree and try and reintroduce those species to replace the fungi species that seem to have been wiped out.
Hey, I never said it was a very good option. It's that or sending work parties in to clear the areas of all the combustable material manually before safely disposing of it.
Alright, alright, I'll shut up.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:33PM
How about secretely sending cheap labour clear the areas of the combustible material and dispose of it wherever we can without getting caugh and stop worrying the public?
It might also require to dispose of the cheap labour which would make it even cheaper.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Alphatool on Tuesday March 18 2014, @12:40PM
Before anyone attempts to deal with the results of the paper, they should try to verify the results. This paper is not backed up by theory, is not repeatable in the lab (and it's a very easy thing to check in a lab - expose identical leaf matter to different levels of radiation and see what happens) and is not consistent with the observations of other scientists. It would be a complete and utter waste of time and money to base any actions on this paper's findings without significant further evidence, and this evidence just doesn't exist.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 18 2014, @03:38PM
By the scientific method, you are completely correct - these results have not been duplicated. In many ways, I'm very glad there isn't another nuclear wasteland of this scale to compare it to.
However, you've misunderstood the experiment here. It's not exposing leaf matter to radiation, it's exposing the naturally occurring biological decomposition agents that should have processed the leaf matter to radiation and seeing if they lose efficacy for any reason.
Your assertion that it would be a waste of time and money to take any action based on the evidence thus far observed is scientifically correct; back in the real world it doesn't matter what the root cause of the accumulation of flammable radioactive vegetation is if it's already on fire, which is one spark / carelessly discarded cigarette end / lightning strike away from reality.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wantkitteh on Tuesday March 18 2014, @03:45PM
Speak of the devil, see threads below for exactly the kind of scientific duplication we were looking for. Case closed, get the undesirables*AHEM*Russian volunteer labour force in here to clear the place asap.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Alphatool on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:15PM
The experiments at BNL don't really have anything to do with the experiments at Chernobyl. BNL used a massive sealed gamma source to irradiate a forest with huge radiation doses, up to several sieverts per day. This is thousands to millions of times more radiation exposure than in the area around Chernobyl which makes it a very different kind of thing - people can live in contaminated areas near Chernobyl for decades without obvious signs of negative effects, but a person would get acute radiation syndrome and die after a day or two in the BNL experimental area, so it's not surprising that there is a difference for plants too.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Wednesday March 19 2014, @10:42AM
That's a good point. My original train of thought was that fungus colonies in both areas had internally accumulated emitting material that had rendered the entire colony incapable of performing it's decomposition function, maybe by partially/completely sterilizing the colony and preventing it from emitting spores on the surface. It's still a valid hypothesis at this point but would rely on the high gamma exposure at BNL and the peak-and-tail direct/indirect exposure in The Zone both causing the same sterilization effect over different time periods and I'm not conversant with the biology of fungus reproduction to a sufficient degree to evaluate that possibility.
(Score: 1) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 18 2014, @05:43PM
Before anyone attempts to deal with the results of the paper, they should try to verify the results. This paper is not backed up by theory, is not repeatable in the lab (and it's a very easy thing to check in a lab - expose identical leaf matter to different levels of radiation and see what happens) and is not consistent with the observations of other scientists.
Have you actually looked at the abstract? The experiment seems pretty straightforward to me. The observed physical effect supports their hypothesis.
Abstract is Here: [springer.com]
The effects of radioactive contamination from Chernobyl on decomposition of plant material still remain unknown. We predicted that decomposition rate would be reduced in the most contaminated sites due to an absence or reduced densities of soil invertebrates. If microorganisms were the main agents responsible for decomposition, exclusion of large soil invertebrates should not affect decomposition. In September 2007 we deposited 572 bags with uncontaminated dry leaf litter from four species of trees in the leaf litter layer at 20 forest sites around Chernobyl that varied in background radiation by more than a factor 2,600. Approximately one quarter of these bags were made of a fine mesh that prevented access to litter by soil invertebrates. These bags were retrieved in June 2008, dried and weighed to estimate litter mass loss. Litter mass loss was 40 % lower in the most contaminated sites relative to sites with a normal background radiation level for Ukraine. Similar reductions in litter mass loss were estimated for individual litter bags, litter bags at different sites, and differences between litter bags at pairs of neighboring sites differing in level of radioactive contamination. Litter mass loss was slightly greater in the presence of large soil invertebrates than in their absence. The thickness of the forest floor increased with the level of radiation and decreased with proportional loss of mass from all litter bags. These findings suggest that radioactive contamination has reduced the rate of litter mass loss, increased accumulation of litter, and affected growth conditions for plants.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Alphatool on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:21PM
I've not only read the abstract, I have read the paper too. Once you get into the details the statistics don't stand up, and neither do the claims of a dose response. The statements in the abstract massively overstate the results that were found, particularly any link between radiation exposure and any effects. It did find a link between the thickness of the forest floor and decrease in mass loss from the bags, but there are lots of better explanations (such as variations in sunlight and wind) to explain this than radiation, and these weren't investigated. Instead, radiation was blamed without any evidence. It's very shoddy work.