ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Soil Processes
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1630121
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Soil Pollution Research: Risk Assessment and Ecosystems ManagementView all 10 articles
Current background state of soils in the Tisza River Basin, Ukraine
Provisionally accepted
- 1Uzhhorod National University, Uzhhorod, Ukraine
- 2University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovakia
- 3Transcarpathian region Scientific Research Forensic Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Uzhhorod, Ukraine
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The territory of the Tisza River Basin has a complex geological and tectonic structure, also pronounced landscape zoning with different types of soil. The assessment of the actual background state of soils was carried out within the national natural parks in 0-20, 20-50, and >50 cm soil profiles in terms of the content of heavy metals (HMs) and the radioactivity of gamma-active radionuclides (RNs). The studied national nature parks are located in different landscape areas (mountains, foothills, and lowlands) with different tectonics, geology, and soil types. Comparison of data on the content of HMs in soils shows that the total concentration of HMs is low (gross content for the 0-20 cm profiles: Zn -19.8-30.1; Cu -9.6-14.1, Pb -9.4-15.8, Cd -1.10-1.76 mgkg-1 and content of acid-soluble forms: Zn -8.7-13.2; Cu -0.67-1.01, Pb -7.6-12.8, Cd -0.36-0.58 mgkg-1 ) with a characteristic increase from mountainous to lowland landscapes. Based on a comparison of the content of HMs in soil profiles and the migration coefficient, it was established that lead (concentrated in the profile 0-20 cm; the migration coefficient is about 81% for lowland landscapes) is of anthropogenic origin, while other HMs are of natural origin. The results of radiological studies show that the radioactivity of technogenic 137 Cs in soils is not high (13.5-24.8 Bqkg -1 ) with a characteristic increase from mountainous to lowland landscapes. The difference in the radioactivity of natural RNs ( 238 U and 232 Th series) for soils of different landscape zones is characteristic. For soils of mountainous landscapes, the total radioactivity of natural gamma-active RNs (excluding 40 K) is significantly higher (254+-27 Bqkg-1 ) than for foothill (239+-52 Bqkg-1 ) and lowland (106+-38 Bqkg-1 ) soils. This is obviously related to the tectonic activity of the young Carpathian Mountains. At the same time, the ratio of the sums of radioactivity of RNs of the 232Th and 238U series (SUM232Th/SUM238U) differs significantly for soils of different landscape zones. In the soils of mountain zones, natural RNs of the 238 U series (SUM232Th/SUM238U=0.87+-0.19) predominate, while in the foothills (SUM232Th/SUM238U=2.26+-0.41) and lowlands (SUM232Th/SUM238U=2.32+-1.47), RNs of the 232Th series predominate.
Keywords: Soil profiles, heavy metals, gamma-active radionuclides, National natural parks, landscape diversity, background monitoring
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sukharev, Mariychuk, Symkanych and Babilia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ruslan Mariychuk, University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovakia
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