Location: Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory
Project Number: 3098-13610-008-064-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2017
End Date: Sep 30, 2019
Objective:
Develop sediment budgets for the coterminous U.S. that includes sediment yield from major land uses on the landscape, sediment scour and deposition for all stream orders, and sediment trapping efficiencies in reservoirs. The data will be used to calibrate CEAP model outputs to ensure sediment budgets are realistic. Techniques used in past studies to calibrate model results using stream gages do not ensure sediment sources above the gage are realistic. Proper sediment source allocation is critically important to ensure conservation scenarios results are meaningful.
Approach:
Perform literature review and analyze sediment budgets by region, stream order, and measurement timing and frequency. When necessary, data will be converted to units required for model calibration. For example, deposition will be converted to mm per year over the floodplain and stream degradation converted to mm per year of down cutting and widening. Budgets will be developed for regions of the country and by stream order as supported by available data. The data will be transformed into a database structure that can easily be read by models used in the CEAP analysis.
