Modeling Soil Erosion with Cesium-137

In order to develop landscape-scale estimates of soil erosion in Minnesota's agricultural landscapes, we conducted a broad survey study of 137Cs in cultivated fields and uncultivated grassland reference sites located across the southern third of Minnesota. Because the only source of 137Cs is nuclear fission and it binds tightly to soils, landscapes were labeled" with 137Cs during aboveground testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result of this