Soil is inhabited by a range of microbes, invertebrates and vertebrates that disintegrate and decompose dead wood and leaf litter. These communities can be perturbed by ionizing radiation from natural radiation sources or from radiation originating from nuclear accidents such as those at Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island. We used experimental manipulations of wood quality due to differences in exposure to ionizing radiation among tree trunks and ambient radiation levels of the soil to test the hypothesis that radioactively contaminated wood would result in a negative correlation between the abundance of soil invertebrates colonizing slices of wood and level of radioactive contamination. We extracted soil invertebrates underneath decomposing wood using mustard powder diluted in water. The abundance of soil invertebrates extracted was highly repeatable at study sites and decreased with increasing ambient radiation and total dose measured with thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs). Four 10 cm thick slices of ca. 70-year old Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) were deposited at 20 sites and the invertebrate taxa and their colonization and their abundance was assessed annually during 2014–2017. There were more soil invertebrates under uncontaminated than contaminated slices of wood. In addition, there were more soil invertebrates in areas with less ambient radioactivity, and there was an interaction effect between contamination of wood and ambient radiation implying that the role of contamination differed among slices. Finally, there was an increase in the abundance of soil invertebrates under wood slices during 2013–2017 implying that the abundance of soil invertebrates increased over time. These findings imply that the abundance of soil animals colonizing wood slices was dependent on background radiation, radioactive contamination of wood and the interaction between contamination of wood and ambient radiation.

土壤中居住着各种微生物，无脊椎动物和脊椎动物，它们会分解并分解枯木和枯枝落叶。电离自然辐射源或核事故产生的辐射会扰乱这些社区例如切尔诺贝利，福岛和三哩岛的那些。由于树干之间的电离辐射的暴露量和土壤的环境辐射水平不同，我们使用了木材质量的实验性操作来检验以下假设：放射性污染的木材会导致定居在木材切片上的无脊椎动物土壤的丰度与土壤的无脊椎动物之间存在负相关关系。放射性污染水平。我们使用在水中稀释的芥末粉在腐烂的木材下提取了无脊椎动物。提取的土壤无脊椎动物的丰度在研究地点具有很高的可重复性，并且随着环境辐射的增加和使用热发光剂量计（TLD）测得的总剂量的降低而降低。大约四个10厘米厚的切片。70岁的苏格兰松树（樟子松）沉积在20个地点，并在2014-2017年期间每年评估无脊椎动物分类群及其定殖和丰度。在未受污染的土壤中，无脊椎动物比受污染的木片多。此外，在环境放射性较低的地区，土壤无脊椎动物更多，木材污染与环境辐射之间存在相互作用，这意味着污染的作用在各个切片之间有所不同。最后，2013-2017年期间，木片下的土壤无脊椎动物数量增加，这意味着土壤无脊椎动物的数量随时间增加。这些发现暗示着土壤动物在木片上定居的丰富性取决于背景辐射，木材的放射性污染以及木材的污染与环境辐射之间的相互作用。