title: Mapping uranium concentration in soil: Belgian experience towards a European map.
abstract: A map of uranium concentration in soil has been planned for the European Atlas of Natural Radiation. This Atlas is being developed by the Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. The great interest in uranium compared to other terrestrial radionuclides stems from the fact that radon (222Rn) is in the decay chain of uranium (238U) and that public exposure to natural ionizing radiation is largely due to indoor radon. With several different databases available, including data (albeit not calibrated) from an airborne survey, Belgium is a favourable case for exploring the methodology of uranium mapping. A harmonized database of uranium in soil was built by merging radiological (not airborne) and geochemical data. Using this harmonized database it was possible to calibrate the data from the airborne survey. Several methods were used to perform spatial interpolation and to smooth the data: moving average without constraint, by soil class and by geological unit. When using the harmonized database, it is first necessary to evaluate the uranium concentration in areas without data or with an insufficient number of data points. Overall, there is a reasonable agreement between the maps on a 1 km × 1 km grid obtained with the two datasets (airborne U and harmonized soil U) with all the methods. The agreement is better when the maps are reduced to a 10 km × 10 km grid; the latter could be used for the European map of uranium concentration in soil.
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Transuranium Elements, Nuclear Security Unit, Via Enrico Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy. Electronic address: giorgia.cinelli@jrc.ec.europa.eu.
authors.forename: Giorgia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cinelli
authors.affiliation: ISIB, Haute Ecole P.-H. Spaak, Rue Royale 150, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Francois
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tondeur
authors.affiliation: FANC, Ravensteinstraat 36, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dehandschutter
authors.affiliation: German Federal Office for Radiation Protection, Köpenicker Allee 120-130, 10318 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bossew
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Transuranium Elements, Nuclear Security Unit, Via Enrico Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy.
authors.forename: Tore
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tollefsen
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Transuranium Elements, Nuclear Security Unit, Via Enrico Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: De Cort
mesh_terms: D001417:Background Radiation; D001530:Belgium; D011834:Radiation Monitoring; D012990:Soil Pollutants, Radioactive / Q000032:analysis*; D062206:Spatial Analysis; D014501:Uranium / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D012990:Soil Pollutants, Radioactive; D014501:Uranium
keywords: Belgium; Geological unit; Mapping; Soil classes; Uranium in soil