ИСТИНА

A sharp increase in the use of agricultural machinery, chemical fertilizers and pesticides and significant changes in soil cultivation technologies have characterized the period since the middle of the last century. A significant marker of the beginning of this time window, which is currently called the Anthropocene, is the arrival of the man-made radioisotope cesium-137 on the Earth’s surface. It was associated with the beginning of nuclear explosion test in the open atmosphere in the mid-1950s. Currently, 137Cs is widely used as a tracer to estimate erosion and sedimentation rates. Within the southern megaslope of the East European Plain, large areas were later contaminated with Chernobyl-derived 137Cs. At present, 137Cs is used in a given area to determine the rates of sediment redeposition in the sediment sinks for at least two time windows. Detailed studies to estimate the sedimentation rate in dry valley bottoms were carried out on 10 small arable catchments located in different parts of the East European Plain.