Sediment Fingerprinting for Calibrating a Soil Erosion and Sediment-Yield Model in Mixed Land-Use Watersheds
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 6
Abstract
This research estimates sediment yield contributed from surface mining soils, stream banks, and forest soils using sediment fingerprinting with isotope tracers coupled with soil erosion and sediment yield modeling in mixed land use watersheds. New and tracer results from sediment sources and transported sediments are collected and explained; sediment fingerprinting, including uncertainty analyses, is performed; and soil erosion and sediment yield modeling is applied through calibration with sediment fingerprinting as well as sediment concentration measurements. The and tracers successfully separated the forest, reclaimed mine, and stream bank sources in Island Branch and Whitaker Branch watersheds located in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, and the results expand the literature database for the usefulness of and tracers to separate end-member sources. A significant difference was measured for the values of and of the forest sediment source when comparing data results collected in 2007 and 2009/2010, highlighting the nonconstant nature of the source. The results from the sediment fingerprinting allowed for further calibration of the transport capacity coefficient, sediment delivery ratio for reclaimed mining soils, and stream bank erosion parameters. Sediment yield from reclaimed surface mining sites showed a decrease over time including 4.4, 2.1, and for 1½, 4, and 6½, respectively, years after mining. A severe ice storm and rainstorms increased forest sediment production by 3.5 times from 2007 to 2009/2010, and sediment yield increased from 0.08 to . Change in the stream bank sediment yield over time was not pronounced. Whitaker Branch bank sediment production was five times higher than Island Branch, which was attributable to the larger susceptible bank area and driving logging trucks across the stream. It is expected that soil erosion and sediment yield modeling in mixed land use watersheds will be coupled with sediment fingerprinting in future studies.
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Acknowledgments
This project was partially funded by the National Science Foundation Award Nos. 0754888 and 0918856. The authors thank the University of Kentucky Department Of Civil Engineering for partial funding of the graduate student. They also would like to acknowledge the participants in the 2009 and 2010 Research Experience for Undergraduates hosted by University of Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky University. Special thanks to Alice Jones and Robert Watts for their contributions toward data collection. The authors thank Dr. Harry Rowe for analysis of the isotopic and elemental data and three anonymous reviewers for their comments, which helped to improve the quality of this manuscript. This is contribution No. 42 of Lilley Cornett Woods Appalachian Ecological Research Station, Eastern Kentucky University.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 6 • June 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 23, 2013
Accepted: Apr 8, 2014
Published online: Apr 10, 2014
Discussion open until: Dec 8, 2014
Published in print: Jun 1, 2015
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