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JMSE
Special Issues
Environmental Radioactivity and Its Applications in Marine Areas
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Environmental Radioactivity and Its Applications in Marine Areas

A special issue of Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (ISSN 2077-1312). This special issue belongs to the section "Marine Environmental Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 September 2025 | Viewed by 2900

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Viena Puigcorbé

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Guest Editor
Department of Marine Biology & Oceanography, CSIC, Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (ICM), Barcelona, Spain
Interests: marine biogeochemistry; natural radionuclides; planktonic community structures productivity and particle fluxes in the open ocean
Dr. Olivier Radakovitch

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Co-Guest Editor
Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN), PSE-SRTE-LRTA, 13115 Saint-Paul-les Durance, France
Interests: radionuclides; trace metals; coastal zone; pollution; sediment and sedimentary processes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Georgios Eleftheriou

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
Institute of Oceanography, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, 19013 Anavyssos, Greece
Interests: applications of environmental radioactivity in geosciences and oceanography; soil radon monitoring for seismic hazard; submarine groundwater discharges estimation via in-situ gamma-spectrometry; study of sedimentary processes via radiotracers; monte carlo simulations of radionuclides' detectors; marine radiomodelling and radioecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Maxi Castrillejo

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
1. Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK
2. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Interests: anthropogenic radioactivity; radiocarbon; biogeochemistry; ocean circulation; environmental radioactivity

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Radionuclides have been extensively used as tracers to study a myriad of processes in the marine ecosystems. Their ubiquitous distribution, well-known production and decay rates and input sources, as well as their diverse physicochemical characteristics and wide range of half-lives, make them powerful tools to trace a multitude of oceanic processes, such as ocean circulation, particle scavenging and cycling, atmosphere–ocean and land–ocean interactions or sedimentation processes.

This special issue welcomes contributions from ocean geosciences, physics, biogeochemistry, ecology, climate, environmental contamination, engineering or other fields that use environmental radioactivity in marine applications to advance the understanding of oceanic processes. Please note that articles submitted to this Special Issue will be processed and published on a rolling basis, given the approval by the reviewers and editors.

Dr. Viena Puigcorbé
Dr. Olivier Radakovitch
Dr. Georgios Eleftheriou
Dr. Maxi Castrillejo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ocean tracers
  • radionuclides
  • environmental radioactivity

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 1953 KiB  
Article
Multivariate Statistics, Radioactivity and Radiological Hazard Evaluation in Marine Sediments of Selected Areas from Sicily, Southern Italy
by Francesco Caridi, Antonio Francesco Mottese, Giuseppe Paladini, Lorenzo Pistorino, Francesco Gregorio, Stefania Lanza, Giovanni Randazzo, Santina Marguccio, Alberto Belvedere, Maurizio D’Agostino, Domenico Majolino and Valentina Venuti
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2025, 13(4), 769; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse13040769 - 12 Apr 2025
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Abstract
This work reports the findings of an investigation aimed at assessing, for the first time, the natural and anthropogenic radioactivity content of marine sediments collected from selected areas of Sicily, Southern Italy. In particular, it focused on evaluating the average activity concentration of [...] Read more.
This work reports the findings of an investigation aimed at assessing, for the first time, the natural and anthropogenic radioactivity content of marine sediments collected from selected areas of Sicily, Southern Italy. In particular, it focused on evaluating the average activity concentration of detected radionuclides and the radiological hazard for humans, above all considering the use of this material for nourishing actual eroded beaches. To this aim, the quantification of the average specific activity of 226Ra, 232Th, and 40K natural and 137Cs anthropogenic radioisotopes was addressed through the employment of High-Purity Germanium (HPGe) gamma-ray spectrometry. Furthermore, the absorbed gamma dose rate (D), the annual effective dose equivalent outdoor (AEDEout), the external hazard index (Hex), and the excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) were also calculated to evaluate the radiological hazard for humans related to external exposure to ionizing radiations. Furthermore, the average specific activity of 137Cs was found to be less than the lowest detectable activity in all cases, excluding anthropogenic radioactive contamination of the investigated samples. Finally, Pearson correlation, principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), i.e., multivariate statistics, were carried out by analyzing detected radioactivity and radiological characteristics to evaluate their relationship with the sampling locations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Radioactivity and Its Applications in Marine Areas)
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20 pages, 3129 KiB  
Article
Assessment of the Performance of 210Pb-Based Dating Models with a Challenging Sediment History in Maryport Harbour (UK)
by José M. Abril-Hernández
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2025, 13(1), 144; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse13010144 - 15 Jan 2025
Viewed by 853
Abstract
The 210Pb-based method is used for absolute age determination in recent sediments (<150 years). Different assumptions are possible, leading to different models and chronologies. The evaluation of the capacities and limitations of the models in challenging sedimentary scenarios is of broad interest [...] Read more.
The 210Pb-based method is used for absolute age determination in recent sediments (<150 years). Different assumptions are possible, leading to different models and chronologies. The evaluation of the capacities and limitations of the models in challenging sedimentary scenarios is of broad interest to the scientific community, and this is the aim of the present work. The performance of the classical models, CFCS and CRS, and the novel TERESA is assessed with a 2 m long, high-resolution core sampled in Maryport Harbour, UK, by using raw data from the literature. It was affected by dredging, shortening, and by the anthropogenic impacts of radionuclides released by the Sellafield nuclear plant and the phosphate industry in Whitehaven and was considered non-datable by the 210Pb method. A reference chronology from Sellafield-derived radionuclides serves to assess the 210Pb dating models. The study uses the mass depth scale and solves the estimation of the unsupported fraction of 210Pb needed for the models. The profile was very irregular, and a cluster analysis led to an ambiguous use of the piecewise CFCS model. The inventory was incomplete and in an unsteady state, but the CRS model can be tentatively applied with the reference SAR and the reference date methods, although also with ambiguous results. TERESA can explicitly handle 210Pbexc fluxes and sedimentation rates that vary over time and shows the best performance with insightful outputs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Radioactivity and Its Applications in Marine Areas)
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20 pages, 5211 KiB  
Article
Spatial Distribution and Decadal Variability of 129I and 236U in the Western Mediterranean Sea
by Maria Leimbacher, Lorenza Raimondi, Maxi Castrillejo, Christof Vockenhuber, Habacuc Pérez-Tribouillier, Katrin Schroeder, Toste Tanhua and Núria Casacuberta
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2024, 12(11), 2039; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse12112039 - 11 Nov 2024
Viewed by 1009
Abstract
This study investigates the spatial and temporal distribution of the artificial radionuclides 129I and 236U in the Western Mediterranean Sea, focusing on their connection to radionuclide sources and circulation dynamics. Taking advantage of unprecedented precision of accelerator mass spectrometry, both tracers [...] Read more.
This study investigates the spatial and temporal distribution of the artificial radionuclides 129I and 236U in the Western Mediterranean Sea, focusing on their connection to radionuclide sources and circulation dynamics. Taking advantage of unprecedented precision of accelerator mass spectrometry, both tracers were firstly investigated in 2013. Here, we examine tracer observations obtained along four stations (re-)visited during the TAlPro2022 expedition in May 2022. Distributions of both 129I and 236U were related to water masses and clearly linked to local circulation patterns: a tracer-poor surface Atlantic inflow, a thining of the tracer minimum at intermediate depths, and a higher tracer signal in Western Mediterranean Deep Waters due to dense water formation in the Algero-Provençal basin. The comparison to 2013 tracer data indicated recent deep ventilation of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the mixing of deep waters and enhanced stratification in intermediate waters in the Algero-Provençal basin due to a temperature and salinity increase between 2013 and 2022. We estimate an overall 129I increase of 20% at all depths between 0 and 500m with respect to 2013, which is not accompanied by 236U. This suggests either the lateral transport of 129I from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, or an additional source of this tracer. The inventories of 129I calculated for each water mass at the four stations point to the deposition of airborne releases from the nuclear reprocessing plants (La Hague and Sellafield) on the surface Mediterranean waters as the more likely explanation for the 129I increase. This work demonstrates the great potential of including measurements of anthropogenic radionuclides as tracers of ocean circulation. However, a refinement of the anthropogenic inputs is necessary to improve their use in understanding ventilation changes in the Mediterranean Sea. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Radioactivity and Its Applications in Marine Areas)
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