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Establishing

TREE Webcams

in the

Chernobyl

Exclusion Zone

In November 2014 Nick Beresford and Mike Wood visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) to begin installing the TREE motion activated cameras with Sergey Gashchak & Eugene Gulyaichenco from the Chornobyl Center.

The cameras will be moved at circa 8 week intervals throughout the project.

The first photographs were downloaded in January 2015 and the cameras have now been moved to new locations. More will be added soon.

Photographs from six cameras set up by Sergey prior to TREE are also on the web-site; including the 1

st

photographic evidence of Brown bears in the Exclusion Zone.

February 2015 Newsletter no. 2

Chernobyl Webcams

Fish sampling in Belarus and Ukraine September 2014

The team sampled fish in three of the most contaminated lakes of the CEZ: Glubokoye, Yanovsky Crawl (near Pripyat) and the Chernobyl cooling pond. The lev-els of radioactive con-tamination in the fish were assessed to evaluate radiation dose. Water and tis-sue samples will also be analysed (with the help of TREE partner, Nottingham Universi-ty) for the presence of chemical species, a potential confounding factor.

Biometric measure-ments were made on whole fish and their organs (liver and gon-ads) to assess general health and reproduc-

TREE researchers Adelaide Lerebours and Jim Smith arrived at Minsk in early September and joined Liubov Nagorskaya and her team from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

They travelled to study sites in the south and east of Belarus, and caught and processed samples of perch (Perca fluviatilis) and roach (Rutilus rutilus) from two reference lakes (Stoyacheye and Dvoriche) and the contaminated, lake Svatoye 3.

After a brief return to the UK, they then took a flight to Kiev and met Dimitri Gudkov from the Institute of Hydrobiology.

tive condition. Blood samples were also col-lected to look for DNA damage.

Liver and gonad sub-samples have been fixed and preserved for histological and genetic analyses in order to investigate underlying molecular mechanisms.

Samples are currently undergoing analyses and the first results for the histopathology of fish gonads look very interesting.

As a whole, Adelaide found this trip a person-ally, and scientifically, rewarding experience and she is looking forward to the next sampling trip in June 2015.

Newsletter no. 2

Selection of photos downloaded in January

The team

Sampling

The laboratory!

We acknowledge the Natural Environment Research Council, Radioactive Waste Management Limited and Environ-ment Agency for the funding received for TREE through the Radioactivity and the Environment (RATE) programme.

www.ceh.ac.uk/tree

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In June 2014 TREE participants from NERC-CEH and the University of Salford visited Universadad de Extremadura, Caceres (Spain). The university agreed to collaborate with field sampling in Spain to provide data to help develop novel transfer models. This link was facilitated by Ciemat (Spain) via collaboration with the EC COMET project.

Sampling began in summer 2014 and will continue seasonally until spring 2015.

The sampling site is located in an area of semi-natural grass-land (a 'dehesa') within the Monfragüe Natural Park.

ICRP Reference Ani-mal and Plant (RAP) samples collected include: Deer, Duck, Frog, Bee, Earthworm,

Rat, Pine tree and Wild grass; soil samples were also taken.

Analysis will be conducted by the Universadad de Extremadura (gamma / Sr / Ra /

210Po /

210Pb /

Pu / Am); NERC-CEH (gamma) & Nottingham University (ICP-MS).

More information will be posted here as the study progresses.

Contact Nick Beresford

February 2015 Newsletter no. 2

Spanish field study site

Northumbria field study site

Griffon vulture

The dehesa

Sampling will begin in August 2015.

All the samples will be analysed for a suite of elements by ICP-MS at Nottingham University. Gamma analysis will be conducted on some samples by NERC-CEH.

Public interaction on research on wildlife in the Exclusion Zone

include Manchester based events for the Manchester Science Festival programme.

The researchers plan to develop activities that bring the sights and sounds of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to the UK public.

Mike Wood, from the School of Environment & Life Sciences, has recently been award-ed NERC Research Council funding to foster public engage-ment on some of the research arising from TREE.

These public engage-ment activities will form part of the NERC 50

th Anniversary

‘Summer of Science’ celebrations and

The sighting of a Brown bear in the Zone which was recorded on our website made it into the BBC’s list of ‘100 things we didn’t know last year’!

Sergey Gashchak

Who’s watching who?

TREE has obtained permission from the Forestry Commission England to collect samples of Roe deer, Wood mice, frogs, earthworms, bees, pine trees, wild grass and soil from two study sites in Northumbria: Kielder and Holystone. Holystone

site

Kielder site

For Twitter updates follow:

@drmdwood

@STARadioecology

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The NERC LO-RISE winter school was held on 19

th—23

rd

January 2015 in Manchester.

The event was open to all NERC RATE students and PDRAs. It included a session by TREE on environmental protection which was presented by Mike Wood (Salford) and Nick Beresford (NERC-CEH, Lancaster).

Activities at the winter school included an introduction to radioactivity in the environment, panel discussions on energy resources and geological disposal, careers advice and a role playing exercise.

The TREE website has the Presentations (& exercises) given by Mike & Nick.

More information is available from: Gareth Law

February 2015 Newsletter no. 2

NERC LORISE Winter School

TREE project meeting @ Manchester University

Our annual project meeting was held at Manchester University on 24

th November 2014.

The main focus of the meeting was to discuss scientific issues related to each of the work packages, to report on progress and to plan future studies.

Each of the four work packages gave a presentation:

WP1: Biogeochemical processes

& radionuclide behaviour in soil-

plant systems

WP2: Novel approaches to esti-mate the radionuclide activity concentrations in the human food chain and terrestrial and aquatic wildlife

WP3: Assessing the uncertainty of exposure of wildlife under field conditions

WP4: Improving our mechanis-tic understanding of the long-term impacts of chronic radiation exposure.

PDRAs and PhD students also gave short presentations on their current and intended activities.

More information on:

Events and Training

The EPSRC Geowaste and NERC RATE programmes held a joint meeting on 9th–11th February 2015 in Loughborough

One of the aims of the meeting was to ensure that all of the PhD students and PDRAs working within both Geowaste and RATE

presented their results or ongoing research, to foster integration between the two programmes and ensure an

opportunity to exchange information and learning. This was achieved through a combination of oral and poster

presentations (see next page), with each RATE project also presenting an introductory overview of the work of their consortium.

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Introducing more of our students and PDRA’s & their studies

TREE Summer School: 30 August – 04 September 2015

February 2015 Newsletter no. 2

TREE will be running a summer school in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone 30

th August – 4th Sept. 2015.

The school will combine lectures with field studies and include a trip around the zone. It is open to all NERC RATE PhD students.

However, the total number of people we can take is restricted for logistical rea-sons. If we have any spare places these will be made available to RATE PDRAs.

Assessing the impact of

ionising radiation on

bivalves - Emily Vernon

The Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation on Crustacean Species: Combining Lab and Field

Studies - Neil Fuller

Measuring terrestrial wild-life radiation exposure under field conditions -

Phakphum Aramrun

Assessing the Bioavaila-bility of Radionuclides in Contaminated Soils Using the Diffusive Gradients in Thin Films Technique -

Alex Chapman

New detectors for live-monitoring of radionu-clides in wildlife - Ross

Fawkes

Interactions Between

Anionic Radionuclides:

I-129, Se-75 and Tc-99

and Geocolloids -

Heather Sanders

Elucidating the interac-tion between anti-oxidants and radiation induced damage to cells to build a model of the causes of low-level radia-tion effects - Nicol Caplin

A phylogenetic and ionomic approach to pre-dict plant uptake of radio-nuclides - Eleni Siasou

Heather Sanders

Phakphum Aramrun

Nicol Caplin

Jim Smith (Portsmouth Uni-versity) is co-ordinating arrangements. More infor-mation will be sent to RATE PhDs and PDRA’s shortly.

Chernobyl number 4 reactor

ECOPOLIS – accommodation during the summer school

Dependant upon interest we may run a ‘Radiological Protection of the Environment’ training

course. Details of a previous course are here. Cost approx. £600 (not inc. accommodation/meals).

Provisional dates: Sometime last 2 weeks July 2015. Email Cath Barnett to register an interest.

Alex Chapman