Modern sediment yield compared to geologic rates of sediment production in a semi-arid basin, New Mexico: assessing the human impact

2004 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1359-1372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen C. Gellis ◽  
Milan J. Pavich ◽  
Paul R. Bierman ◽  
Eric M. Clapp ◽  
Amy Ellevein ◽  
...  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (8) ◽  
pp. 935-953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Bierman ◽  
Joanna M. Reuter ◽  
Milan Pavich ◽  
Allen C. Gellis ◽  
Marc W. Caffee ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Sekhon ◽  
◽  
Jay L. Banner ◽  
Bryan Black ◽  
Nathan Miller ◽  
...  

2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jordan ◽  
Olav Slaymaker

ABSTRACTA sediment budget approach is used to investigate the sources, storage, and yield of clastic sediment in Lillooet River watershed, in the southern Coast Mountains. The 3150 km2basin is heavily glacierised, and includes a Quaternary volcanic complex which has been active in the Holocene. The sediment yield has been determined from the rate of advance of the delta at the basin outlet. The floodplain of the main river valley is aggrading as the delta advances, and probably has been through most of the Holocene. Major sediment sources in the basin include glaciers and Neoglacial deposits, debris flows, and landslides in the Quaternary volcanic complex. Soil and bedrock creep, bank erosion of Pleistocene glacial deposits, and sediment from logging and agriculture are probably of minor importance. Estimates of sediment production from these sources explain only about half the observed clastic sediment yield plus the rate of valley aggradation. The unexplained sediment production may be associated with paraglacial sediments exposed by glacial retreat from the nineteenth century Neoglacial maximum; alternatively the frequency of occurrence of intermediate scale debris flows and landslides has been seriously underestimated. Sediment supply is highly episodic over time scales of centuries to thousands of years. Major factors in the temporal pattern of Holocene sediment supply are periods of volcanism, large landslides, the retreat of glaciers from the Neoglacial maximum, and recent river engineering works.


Solid Earth ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Sarah ◽  
M. Zonana

Abstract. Semi-arid areas where grazing is the main land use exhibit a "three-phase-mosaic" pattern of dominant surface patches: shrubs, trampling routes, and intershrub areas. This pattern differs from the "two-phase mosaic" seen in grazing-free semi-arid areas. The patches might create a positive feedback process in which enhanced infiltration beneath shrubs minimizes overland flow from under their canopies, thereby strengthening the sink–source mechanism by which overland flow generated between shrubs rapidly infiltrates into the soil beneath them, where it deposits soil particles, litter, nutrients and organic matter, thereby enhancing infiltration by changing the local microtopography, and improving soil properties. To analyze sink–source relationships among the patches in grazed areas in rangelands of the semi-arid northern Negev region of Israel, we constructed small runoff plots, 0.25–1.0 m2 in area, of five types: shrub (Sarcopoterium spinosum), intershrub, route, route–shrub combination, and intershrub–shrub combination. The shrubs always occupied the downslope part of the plot. Overland flow and sediment deposits were measured in all plots during 2007/8 and 2008/9. The combined plots yielded much less overland flow and sediments than intershrub, routes and shrub ones, indicating that the shrubs absorbed almost all the yields of the upper part of their plots. The shrubs generated less runoff and sediments than routes and intershrubs; runoff flows from the routes and intershrubs were similar; sediment yield was highest in the intershrubs. Thus, runoff yield exhibited a two-phase mosaic pattern, and sediment yield, i.e., soil erosion, a three-phase mosaic pattern.


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