Catchment size and contribution of the largest daily events to suspended sediment load on a continental scale
Abstract The classic approach defines an extreme event as a rare event identified by magnitude–frequency analysis and quantified by its deviation from a central value. They are key to understand geomorphological dynamics, since they are responsible for a considerable amount of work and “time compression”. Time compression means that most of the geomorphic work (particularly sediment transport) is produced in very short temporal intervals (i.e. in few events). Moreover, it is well known from magnitude–frequency analyses that events not necessarily extreme by magnitude could be responsible for a large amount of geomorphic work. To analyse the time compression of geomorphological processes, a …
Spatial variability of the relationships of runoff and sediment yield with weather types throughout the Mediterranean basin
Este artículo contiene 16 páginas, 6 figuras, 2 tablas.
A regional analysis of the effects of largest events on soil erosion
A large amount of geomorphic work is caused by a small number of extreme events that are mainly responsible for the time compression of geomorphic processes. The classic approach defines extreme events by their magnitude and they are quantified by certain deviation from a central value. Alternatively, we define extreme events as the largest events sorted by rank, whatever their absolute magnitude. In this case, events with equal rank from two different sites can be responsible for different magnitudes of geomorphic work, e.g., the amount of erosion. The new approach applied to soil erosion is that, whatever the magnitude of soil eroded, erosion is a time compressed process and the percentag…
Contribution of the largest events to suspended sediment transport across the USA
This work analyses the contribution of the largest events to suspended sediment transport on the continental scale. The analysis is based on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Suspended Sediment and Ancillary database. Data were obtained from 1314 catchments, comprising more than 2 500 000 daily events. The total number of days in the dataset amounts to 10 000 years. Catchments are of different sizes and belong to distinct climatic environments; they are distributed for the analysis according to USA hydrological divisions (HDs). The main objective of the research is to examine the effect of the n-largest event on the total suspended sediment load over recorded periods, and to discus…