Three soil cores collected from China and UK show the 210Pbex and 137Cs depth
distribution on uncultivated and cultivated
land. Depth distributions of the two nuclides are very similar. Those nuclide concentrations are higher in the top horizon and decrease exponentially with depth on uncultivated land while the concentrations are almost uni-form throughout the plough layer as a result of mixing asso-ciated with cultivation on cultivated land. 210Pbex reference inventory in the Loess Plateau is 573 mBq·cm-2, a little higher than 520.0 mBq·cm-2 in UK.
distribution of artificial fallout 137Cs, produced during the nuclear testing period of the late 1950s and 1960s, is in an unsteady state. In contrast, distribution of natural fallout 210Pbex is in a
steady state un-der constant conditions of land environment and erosion processes for a long term, e.g. >100 years. Therefore, mass balances of 137Cs and 210Pbex in soil are different. According to its processes of continues deposition from the atmosphere, nature decay and losses with soil losses, 210Pbex steady state mass balance models for cultivated land as well as for uncul-tivated land are developed to estimate soil erosion rates in this paper. Besides, the proportion of freshly deposited 210Pbex fallout removed by erosion on cultivated land can also be calculated from 210Pbex depth distribution at a reference site of uneroded permanent grass land.