A 137Cs erosion model with moving boundary

• The diffused moving boundary principle analysing 137Cs flux variation.
• The new erosion model applies to uniform rainfall areas.
• The erosion effect on 137Cs will decrease exponentially with increasing depth.
• The new model provides two methods of calculating erosion rate.

A novel quantitative model of the relationship between diffused concentration changes and erosion rates using assessment of soil losses was developed. It derived from the analysis of surface soil 137Cs flux variation under persistent erosion effect and based on the principle of geochemistry kinetics moving boundary. The new moving boundary model improves the basic simplified transport model (Zhang et al., 2008), and mainly applies to uniform rainfall areas which show a long-time soil erosion. The simulation results for this kind of erosion show under a long-time soil erosion, the influence of 137Cs concentration will decrease exponentially with increasing depth. Using the new model fit to the measured 137Cs depth distribution data in Zunyi site, Guizhou Province, China which has typical uniform rainfall provided a good fit with R2 = 0.92. To compare the soil erosion rates calculated by the simple transport model and the new model, we take the Kaixian reference profile as example. The soil losses estimated by the previous simplified transport model are greater than those estimated by the new moving boundary model, which is consistent with our expectations.