The water discharge and sediment load have been increasingly altered by climate change and human activities in recent decades. For the Pearl River, however, long-term variations in the sediment regime, especially in the last decade, remain poorly known. Here we updated knowledge of the temporal trends in the sediment regime of the Pearl River at annual, seasonal and monthly time scales from the 1950s to 2020. Results show that the annual sediment load and suspended sediment concentration (SSC) exhibited drastically decreased, regardless of water discharge. Compared with previous studies, we also found that sediment load and SSC reached a conspicuous peak in the 1980s, and showed a significant decline starting in the 2000s and 1990s, respectively. In the last decade, however, water discharge and sediment load showed slightly increasing trends. At the seasonal scale, the wet-season water discharge displays a decreasing trend, while the dry-season water discharge is increasing. At the monthly scale, the flood seasons in the North and East Rivers typically occur one month earlier than that in the West River due to the different precipitation regimes. Precipitation was responsible for the long-term change of discharge, while human activities (e.g. dam construction and land use change) exerted different effects on the variations in sediment load among different periods. Changes in the sediment regime have exerted substantial influences on downstream channel morphology and saltwater intrusion in the Greater Bay Area. Our study proposes a watershed-based solution, and provides scientific guidelines for the sustainable development of the Greater Bay Area.
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Contributions of suspended load from Missouri River tributaries, southeast South Dakota, and northeast Nebraska: Building a sediment budget
Suspended sediment plays a critical role in riverine ecosystem health and river processes and is respondent to human alterations such as dams and increased land use. Gavins Point Dam, located on the Missouri River near Yankton, South Dakota, restricts upstream suspended load; yet, suspended sediment concentrations (SSC) increase when the river reaches Sioux City, Iowa. We determined the suspended load concentrations of seven tributaries of the Missouri River entering downstream of the dam. These data were collected from 2012 to 2019 during the summer months of May–July using a depth‐integrated sampler. Sediment rating curves were created based on discharge and SSC. We constructed a simple sediment budget, which indicated that the tributaries located in South Dakota contribute the bulk of the Missouri River's suspended load at ~80%, while the Nebraska tributaries contribute <5%. The remaining sediment is likely supplied by bank and bed erosion. Temporal changes were examined by comparing our recent measurements with historical data from USGS gaging stations on the James River and the Big Sioux River. Suspended sediment and discharge have increased by nearly an order of magnitude, potentially due to increases in precipitation and land use. Sediment budgets are useful resources for informing river management plans on a basin‐wide scale. Given the drastic, long‐term impacts of disruptions to sediment and flow regimes from dams and climate change, this research provides necessary groundwork for remediation efforts and river management.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10452243
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- River Research and Applications
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1535-1459
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 511-521
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Humans have drastically disrupted the global sediment cycle. Suspended sediment flux and concentration are key controls over both river morphology and river ecosystems. Our ability to understand sediment dynamics within river corridors is limited by observations. Here, we present RivSed, a database of satellite observations of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) from 1984 to 2018 across 460 large (>60 m wide) US rivers that provides a new, spatially explicit view of river sediment. We found that 32% of US rivers have a declining temporal trend in sediment concentration, with a mean reduction of 40% since 1984, whereas only 2% have an increasing trend. Most rivers (52%) show decreasing sediment concentration longitudinally moving downstream, typically due to a few large dams rather than the accumulated effect of many small dams. Comparing our observations with modeled ‘pre-dam’ longitudinal SSC, most rivers (53%) show different patterns. However, contemporary longitudinal patterns in concentration are remarkably stable from year to year since 1984, with more stability in large, highly managed rivers with less cropland. RivSed has broad applications for river geomorphology and ecology and highlights anthropogenic effects on river corridors across the US.
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Abstract Centuries‐long intensive land‐use change in the north‐eastern United States provides the opportunity to study the timescale of geomorphic response to anthropogenic disturbances. In this region, forest‐clearing and agricultural practices following EuroAmerican settlement led to deposition of legacy sediment along valley bottoms, including behind mill dams. The South River in western Massachusetts experienced two generations of damming, beginning with mill dams up to 6‐m high in the eighteenth–nineteenth century, and followed by construction of the Conway Electric Dam (CED), a 17‐m‐tall hydroelectric dam near the watershed outlet in 1906. We use the mercury (Hg) concentration in upstream deposits along the South River to constrain the magnitude, source, and timing of inputs to the CED impoundment. Based on cesium‐137 (137Cs) chronology and results from a sediment mixing model, remobilized legacy sediment comprised
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Abstract Large dams are a leading cause of river ecosystem degradation. Although dams have cumulative effects as water flows downstream in a river network, most flow alteration research has focused on local impacts of single dams. Here we examined the highly regulated Colorado River Basin (CRB) to understand how flow alteration propagates in river networks, as influenced by the location and characteristics of dams as well as the structure of the river network—including the presence of tributaries. We used a spatial Markov network model informed by 117 upstream‐downstream pairs of monthly flow series (2003–2017) to estimate flow alteration from 84 intermediate‐to‐large dams representing >83% of the total storage in the CRB. Using Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression, we then investigated how flow alteration was influenced by local dam properties (e.g., purpose, storage capacity) and network‐level attributes (e.g., position, upstream cumulative storage). Flow alteration was highly variable across the network, but tended to accumulate downstream and remained high in the main stem. Dam impacts were explained by network‐level attributes (63%) more than by local dam properties (37%), underscoring the need to consider network context when assessing dam impacts. High‐impact dams were often located in sub‐watersheds with high levels of native fish biodiversity, fish imperilment, or species requiring seasonal flows that are no longer present. These three biodiversity dimensions, as well as the amount of dam‐free downstream habitat, indicate potential to restore river ecosystems via controlled flow releases. Our methods are transferrable and could guide screening for dam reoperation in other highly regulated basins.
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