Radial growth response of scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) to a gradient of radioactive contamination

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Abstract

The annual rings of pine trees show a notable response to high doses of ionizing radiation, making the development of “dose-response models of radial growth” a compelling area of study. This research analyzed the radial growth of 50 common pine trees in the East-Ural Radioactive Trace (EURS), an area contaminated by the 1957 Kyshtym accident. Cores from 34 trees growing in two sites with minimal radioactive contamination served as a control group. A decline in the radial growth index of pines within the EURS zone was observed from 1959 to 1962, corresponding to 2–5 years after the accident. The severity of this decrease was directly proportional to soil contamination density with 90Sr at the trees’ location. The zone where the radial growth response was detected was narrow, approximately 300 m wide. The range of initial dose rates to pine meristems that elicited a response varied from 0.62 to 4.23 Gy per day—a range of less than one order of magnitude. Trees exposed to higher doses perished, while those exposed to lower doses exhibited radial growth comparable to that of control plots. The strongest model linking pine radial growth index to radioactive contamination density at the tree trunk used the average growth index for 1959—1960, with a linear regression model achieving a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.69.

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About the authors

M. V. Modorov

Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: voloduke@mail.ru
Russian Federation, 202, March 8 St., Yekaterinburg, 620144

V. V. Kukarskikh

Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: voloduke@mail.ru
Russian Federation, 202, March 8 St., Yekaterinburg, 620144

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2. Fig. 1. Map of the study area: 1 - impact site, 2 - Control-1, 3 - Control-2. The ‘Atlas of the East Ural and Karachay radioactive traces’ including the forecast up to 2047 was used as a substrate. [23]. The sizes of the circles on the inset reflect the beta-particle flux density on the soil surface near the tree trunk.

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3. Fig. 2. Growth indices of common pine during the period 1959-1962. On the left - pine growth index on two control plots, dots show values for individual trees, red lines - mean value for each sample and SD. Right - pine growth index values in the impact site as a function of beta particle flux density at the soil level near the tree trunk; black line and grey line show the linear regression model with 95% confidence interval; the range into which M ± SD of any of the control plots falls is shown in red, the range into which M ± 2 × SD of any of the control plots falls is shown in green (see text for explanations).

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