Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly

In the months after Chernobyl, mushrooms e.g. in the Tirol and in Eastern Europe were measured concentrating fallout up to 400x.

I'm not surprised that slower growing vegetation is showing an uptick.

Was there such a time? A quick google gives me, for trees, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_plants#... "The early Devonian landscape was devoid of vegetation taller than waist height." and "The first plants to develop this secondary growth, and a woody habit, were apparently the ferns, and as early as the middle Devonian one species, Wattieza, had already reached heights of 8 m and a tree-like habit.",

Comparing that with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_fungi "A rich diversity of fungi is known from the lower Devonian Rhynie chert", and lower Devonian = early Devonian, I very tentatively conclude fungi precluded trees. Given that, I (not hindered by much specific knowledge of the subject) expect that fungi breaking down cellulose co-evolved with trees.

Decomposition of plant matter in the Carboniferous period wasnt hindered by the lack of microbes of fungi, rather the plant matter was covered by shallow seas and swamps. It was the water that inhibited the breakdown. You can see the same process going on today in peat bogs.

I speak as an expert. I spent one summer between grade school and high school cutting peat in a peat bog. It wasnt wet like the Everglades, but you could squeeze a handful of peat and see the water drip out.

The dead forests you mentioned may have became massive coal beds via the "charcoal route"; i.e. a global firestorm may have incinerated essentially the entire biosphere.

    The global debris layer created by the end-Cretaceous 
    impact at Chicxulub contained enough soot to indicate
    that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned.

Source:

K-Pg extinction: Reevaluation of the heat-fire hypothesis; Robertson, Lewis, Sheehan & Toon, 2013; Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrg.20018/abstra...

It's like the evolution of lignin-consuming fungi needs to start all over: this time the fungi in question needs to be able to both break down lignin, and be radiation-resistant.

Let's wait 60 million years and see.

We should try this: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_ca...

From looking at the wiki on neutron moderators[0], it seems like light water is used in more reactors globally, so would that be cheaper to use? And maybe for deployment you'd have quadcopters drop biodegradable ballons filled with it.

Would be really interesting to read a feasibility study around this.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator

To the best of my understanding, graphite in reactors serves the purpose of moderating nuclear chain reactions. The radioactive materials in the forest are almost certainly not dense enough to undergo a chain reaction, so adding a moderator would be pointless. The issue isn't the environmental radiation (like you might worry about standing next to an exposed nuclear core), it's the prospect that radioactive materials might be absorbed by people (like you might worry about if a nuclear core was on fire in the same city as you). Spreading moderators around would do nothing to help about bioaccumulation.

Maybe it's more useful to sprinkle massive amounts of bacteria and such... maybe develop some that have some kind of resistance to the radiation. They´ll die eventually but you can keep the planes at it.

My first thought was local weather -- the exclusion zone is a pretty big place. The two pages of their paper I have access to, however, suggests they were quite conscious of that. If they accounted for it properly, the methodology is probably valid.

I'd very much like to see the raw data, of course.

As nknighthb says, it's hard to say without access to the full paper. I googled for it, but couldn't find it.

There are two things I noticed in the web page (not the paper) that triggered questions immediately.

Firstly the claim "Because they had so many bags placed in so many different locations, they were able to statistically control for outside factors such as humidity, temperature and forest and soil type". The map only has 19 or so locations. Seems a bit few to me to control for so many variables. Or am I mistaken?

Secondly, the map has areas colored green, but the legend runs from yellow via orange to red. What does green mean? Radiation at normal levels?

More spin:

Carbon that is not decaying is carbon that is sequestered. If the trees don't decompose, it removes carbon from the biosphere and ultimately from the atmosphere.

Win!

I'm surprised. I'd expect micro-organisms to adapt faster to radiation than plants, not slower.

"To confirm their hunch, they created around 600 small mesh bags and stuffed them each with leaves, collected at an uncontaminated site..."

They used uncontaminated samples yet the environment killed the microorganisms and fungi they brought in. I think this doesn't work as long as the radiation level stays this high in the area.

The issue is most likely that high radiation levels are inhibiting the growth of microorganisms. So new microorganisms would probably just die.

Note that this is not particularly unexpected. We do this on purpose (in a more controlled manner) to prevent spoilage of food and reduce food borne illnesses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

That will be happening every time it rains, wind blows, river flows, something like an animal comes in etc. Repopulating it probably isn't hard and wouldn't take long as it's happening naturally. The tricky part is trying not to have every organism killed after arriving.

The whole "compare Chernobyl to an incident at a passive-safe reactor" thing is an enormous pet peeve of mine. Fukushima is certainly no such thing.

radiation underwater is much, much less harmful, because water is much more dense than air.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

I take it you didn't read the Smithsonian article? The second paragraph says:

> Birds around Chernobyl have significantly smaller brains that those living in non-radiation poisoned areas; trees there grow slower; and fewer spiders and insects—including bees, butterflies and grasshoppers—live there.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disast... , which also points out that "[s]ome plants and animals have been able to adapt to the increased radiation levels present in and around Chernobyl", but then only lists the Arabidopsis plant.

There is more animal diversity there now than before, but that can also be attributed to it being more like a wildlife sanctuary.

That just redistributes the radiation into the fungi. Then what do you do?

Basically, radiation is effecting the ability of natural decomposition processes in the exclusion zone. A study was conducted with natural leaves in panty hose bags within the exclusion zone and outside it. 60% percent of the weight of the bags was still retained in the exclusion zone after one year.

This is a major concern because the exclusion zone (particularly the Red Forest) has 27 years of litter (leaves and other plant material) which is a fire hazard. A large fire could redistribute the radioactive material outside of the exclusion zone.

Hope that helps.

Yeah I can't believe those deceitful bastards at the Smithsonian would dare float the idea of a possible subscription to their magazine before you read their article.

You could just click it you know.