Radioactivity in the environment

The presence and distribution of natural (e.g. ²¹⁰Pb, ²¹⁰Po, Ra, ²³⁸U) and artificial (e.g. ¹³⁷Cs, ⁹⁰Sr, Pu) radionuclides in the environment can be used both as an indicator of their impact on the environment and on humans and as a tracer of environmental processes. There are two major groups of applications as environmental tracers: (1) those that provide timescales of past and present processes and (2) those that trace substances involved in a transport, exchange, and mixing processes. Thus, environmental radionuclides are unique tools in local and regional studies for investigating the time- and space-integrated characteristics of environmental systems. Environmental radionuclides—often in combination with stable isotopes and other geochemical proxies— provide a powerful tool, often indispensable, for studying the water cycling, land-ocean interaction, atmospheric processes, global carbon cycle, ocean processes or erosion and sedimentation processes. Despite the multiple applications of radionuclides, environmental processes and their proper understanding and quantification through radioactive isotopes remain poorly understood, a fact that we intend to address through this MERS research theme.