Comparison of Sediment Connectivity Indices to Synoptic Turbidity Data for Validating Predictions of Sediment Transport/Deposition Potential
Abstract
Sediment erosion, transport, and deposition can occur at many points throughout a watershed: for instance, eroding from hillslopes and streambanks or depositing in the channel and on floodplains. In this work, we assessed sediment transport/deposition along source to sink watershed pathways with a sediment connectivity framework. Specifically, we tested how well existing sediment connectivity indices, computed at roughly 30 sites, compared with synoptic turbidity data. We further combined these sediment connectivity indices with weights for hillslope erosion using the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), riparian sediment trapping using the land cover data, and stream bank conditions to see if these refinements provided a more accurate prediction of turbidity than without. With the sediment connectivity framework, two perspectives were considered: (1) from a single source pixel looking downstream at deposition potential along its pathway and (2) from a downstream location looking upstream at all source pixels whose pathways intersects that location. These two perspectives allow for (1) assessment of where sediment generated from a specific location will most affect downstream locations and (2) determination of which upstream areas most affect a specific downstream location. We applied our sediment connectivity framework to subbasins of the Dan and Roanoke River Basins upstream of the John H. Kerr Reservoir in south-central Virginia and north-central North Carolina and discuss how different watershed configurations may deliver more or less sediment downstream.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMEP51C2104P
- Keywords:
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- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1804 Catchment;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1815 Erosion;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1824 Geomorphology: general;
- HYDROLOGY