Sediment source apportionment using optical property composite signatures in a rural catchment, Brazil

Applying geochemical and colour properties to quantify sediment sources in a Brazilian semiarid ephemeral river system

“…Therefore, all the modelled source contributions were considered to be acceptably accurate (Table 4). The overall average values of RMSE and MAE were 6.0% and 5.5%, respectively, and these are clearly comparable to the accuracy reported by other studies using sediment source fingerprinting (Uber et al, 2019;Nosrati et al, 2021b;Nosrati et al, 2021c;Amorim et al, 2021).…”

“…Here, channel banks correspond to deep walls incised by the river network, typically varying between 3-8 m in height. These morphological features can minimize root protection and lead to high erosion rates similar to degraded channel banks (Tiecher et al, 2018;Amorim et al, 2021). In contrast, unpaved roads were estimated to make lower contributions (SS = 16%; BS = 13%) to the sampled target sediment.…”

“…Various properties have been used to achieve sediment source apportionment, such as geochemical elements (Collins et al, 1997;Batista et al 2019), radionuclides (Walling and Woodward, 1992;Ben Slimane et al, 2016), C and N stable isotopes (Garzon-Garcia et al, 2017;Collins et al, 2019) and spectroscopic properties (Tiecher et al, 2016;Amorim et al, 2021). However, the time and resources required to analyse some of these tracers frequently determine the tracer selection and the ongoing lack of standardization among source fingerprinting procedures continues to hinder the wider application of the fingerprinting approach around the world (Collins et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, the use of colour tracers is relatively simple, less time-consuming and associated with a lower cost than other properties. Accordingly, colour has been used as an alternative sediment source tracer in many catchments under humid climates (Martínezcarreras et al, 2010;Tiecher et al, 2015;Amorim et al, 2021;Pulley and Collins, 2021).…”

The potential for colour to provide a robust alternative to high-cost sediment source fingerprinting: Assessment using eight catchments in England

“…Fast to measure tracers based on visible or infra-red spectra are being increasingly used and have the potential to significantly reduce the costs associated with conventional tracer analyses (Martinez-Carreras et al, 2010;Barthod et al, 2015;Brosinsky et al, 2014;Evrard et al, 2019;Ramon et al, 2020;Amorim et al, 2021). Their measurement, however, often still requires specialist laboratory equipment.…”