Chernobyl Doses. Volume 1. Analysis of Forest Canopy Radiation Response fromMultispectral Imagery and the Relationship to Doses

摘要

This volume of the report Chernobyl Doses presents details of a new, quantitativemethod for remotely sensing ionizing radiation dose to vegetation. Analysis of Landsat imagery of the area within a few kilometers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor station provides maps of radiation dose to pine forest canopy resulting from the accident of April 26, 1986. Detection of the first date of significant, persistent deviation from normal of the spectral reflectance signature of pine foliage produces contours of radiation dose in the 20 to 80 Gy range extending up to 4 km from the site of the reactor explosion. The effective duration of exposure for the pine foliage is about 3 weeks. For this exposure time, the LD50 of Pinus sylvestris (Scotch pine) is about 23 Gy. The practical lower dose limit for the remote detection of radiation dose to pine foliage with the Landsat Thematic Mapper is about 5 Gy or 1/4 of the LD50. Chernobyl, Dose, Forest damage, Conifer stress, Fallout, Change detection, Ionizing radiation, Multispectral imagery.