title: Sediment source fingerprinting as an aid to catchment management: A review of the current state of knowledge and a methodological decision-tree for end-users.
abstract: The growing awareness of the environmental significance of fine-grained sediment fluxes through catchment systems continues to underscore the need for reliable information on the principal sources of this material. Source estimates are difficult to obtain using traditional monitoring techniques, but sediment source fingerprinting or tracing procedures, have emerged as a potentially valuable alternative. Despite the rapidly increasing numbers of studies reporting the use of sediment source fingerprinting, several key challenges and uncertainties continue to hamper consensus among the international scientific community on key components of the existing methodological procedures. Accordingly, this contribution reviews and presents recent developments for several key aspects of fingerprinting, namely: sediment source classification, catchment source and target sediment sampling, tracer selection, grain size issues, tracer conservatism, source apportionment modelling, and assessment of source predictions using artificial mixtures. Finally, a decision-tree representing the current state of knowledge is presented, to guide end-users in applying the fingerprinting approach.
authors.affiliation: Sustainable Soils and Grassland Systems Department, Rothamsted Research, Okehampton, EX20 2SB, UK. Electronic address: adrian.collins@rothamsted.ac.uk.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Collins
authors.affiliation: Geography Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pulley
authors.affiliation: Geography Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa; School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton, Northampton, NN2 6JD, UK.
authors.forename: I D L
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Foster
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, Baltimore, MD, 21228, United States.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gellis
authors.affiliation: Department of Agraria, University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Italy.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Porto
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey, Atlanta, GA, 30093, United States.
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Horowitz
mesh_terms: D003663:Decision Trees; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D019015:Geologic Sediments
keywords: Mixing model; Source fingerprinting; Source tracing; Suspended sediment sources; Uncertainty