Annotation

The studies were performed within the project “Assessment of Natural Groundwater Protection from Pollutants, Including Radionuclides, in the Russian Dnipro River Basin” using the grant # 10032105-156 from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada and funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

The project’s goal is to perform basin and regional assessments and mapping of shallow groundwater protectability from and vulnerability to priority pollutants, including radionuclides, in the Russian Dnipro River basin.

The basin assessment and mapping of shallow groundwater protectability from pollutants were performed on the 1:1,000,000 scale for the entire Russian Dnipro River basin in order to obtain a preliminary assessment of the ecological condition of shallow groundwater and reveal main tendencies in the adverse processes of pollution.

The regional assessment of shallow groundwater protectability from and vulnerability to pollutants was performed on the 1:200,000 scale for Bryansk and Kaluga oblasts within the Dnipro basin in order to obtain a more detailed assessment of the condition of shallow groundwater on territories with the highest radioactive contamination as a result of the Chernobyl accident to quantitatively assess the existing level of contamination and forecast its change.

The basin (1:1,000,000 scale) studies used only qualitative assessments and a very simple calculation of pollutant migration time characterizing the natural potential of the protection zone and shallow groundwater. Such assessments may be used only for survey purposes. Regional (1:200,000 scale) studies have a qualitative and quantitative frame based on the use of simple model-cartographic methods for characterizing protectability from and vulnerability to pollutants of only shallow groundwater. These assessments are needed to make preliminary decisions aimed at environmental rehabilitation and serve as a basis for planning and grounding larger-scale efforts and schematizing natural conditions in order to aid in forecasting.

In Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk and Orel oblasts that have radioactive contamination, shallow groundwater has a marked tendency to pollution, and the protection zone is also polluted. This calls for large-scale studies that include experimental study of filtration, migration, physical-chemical processes and their parameters as well as modeling and forecasting the change in the degree of radioactive contamination of the protection zone and shallow groundwater in these regions using shallow groundwater vulnerability to pollution by caesium-137 as the guide.