Validating the use of 137Cs measurements to estimate rates of soil redistribution by wind

Wind erosion has degraded over one-half billion hectares of land worldwide. 137Cesium (137Cs) has been used as a tracer to study long-term rates of soil redistribution by water and, to a lesser extent, by wind. Early studies assumed that the decline in 137Cs activity for a potentially eroded soil relative to that for an uneroded soil was linearly proportional to soil loss. More recently, models have emerged that consider the effects of soil cultivation and the particle surface area-dependent partitioning of 137Cs on soils. We investigated the partitioning of 137Cs in wind-eroded sediments and with soil surface samples sieved into contiguous ranges of particle sizes. We also compared the 137Cs activities and stratification of several adjacent soils with known wind erosion and deposition histories. Finally, we tested 137Cs-based soil loss models with measured data from sites with documented histories. 137Cs activities and mean particle diameters of aeolian samples agreed well with the 137Cs activities and respective mean diameters of the sieved surface soil samples. Good agreement between model estimations and measured data indicated that 137Cs models developed to estimate soil redistribution by water were also applicable to soil redistribution by wind provided that the models contained an appropriate particle size correction parameter.