Use of beryllium-7 to document soil erosion associated with short-term rainfall

The beryllium-7(7Be) tracer technique is an important complement to radioactive tracer techniques using 137Cs and 210Pb, which is specifically used to determine the short-term soil erosion rate. This paper reports a new model for radionuclide measurements to estimate soil redistribution for use with 7Be measurements. The approach was successfully tested from a study of short-term soil redistribution undertaken on two selected sloping sites. The estimates of soil redistribution obtained using the 7Be model were consistent with those obtained from erosion pins deployed within the same study area. The results confirm the potential for using 7Be to document soil erosion.