Quantitative sediment source attribution with compound-specific isotope analysis in a C3 plant-dominated catchment (central Switzerland)

Quantitative sediment source attribution with compound-specific isotope analysis in a C3 plant-dominated catchment (central Switzerland). Alewell, C., Birkholz, A., Meusburger, K., Schindler Wildhaber, Y., & Mabit, L. Biogeosciences, 13(5):1587–1596, March, 2016.

Paper doi abstract bibtex

As sediment loads impact freshwater systems and infrastructure, their origin in complex landscape systems is of crucial importance for sustainable management of agricultural catchments. We differentiated the sediment source contribution to a lowland river in central Switzerland by using compound-speciﬁc isotope analysis (CSIA). We found a clear distinction of sediment sources originating from forest and agricultural land use. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the uncertainty of sediment source attribution in: (i) using compound content (in our case, long-chain fatty acids; FAs) rather than soil organic matter content to transfer δ13C signal of FAs to soil contribution and (ii) restricting the investigation to the long-chain FAs (\textgreater C22 : 0) not to introduce errors due to aquatic contributions from algae and microorganisms. Results showed unambiguously that during base ﬂow, agricultural land contributed up to 65 % of the suspended sediments, while forest was the dominant sediment source during high ﬂow. This indicates that connectivity of sediment source areas within the river changes between base and high ﬂow conditions. Uncertainty, which might occur in complex, large-scale studies due to undetected source attribution and/or CSSI signature degradation, is low because of limited data complexity in our study (i.e., two–three sources and two tracers).

@article{alewell_quantitative_2016,
	title = {Quantitative sediment source attribution with compound-specific isotope analysis in a {C3} plant-dominated catchment (central {Switzerland})},
	volume = {13},
	issn = {1726-4189},
	url = {https://www.biogeosciences.net/13/1587/2016/},
	doi = {10.5194/bg-13-1587-2016},
	abstract = {As sediment loads impact freshwater systems and infrastructure, their origin in complex landscape systems is of crucial importance for sustainable management of agricultural catchments. We differentiated the sediment source contribution to a lowland river in central Switzerland by using compound-speciﬁc isotope analysis (CSIA). We found a clear distinction of sediment sources originating from forest and agricultural land use. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the uncertainty of sediment source attribution in: (i) using compound content (in our case, long-chain fatty acids; FAs) rather than soil organic matter content to transfer δ13C signal of FAs to soil contribution and (ii) restricting the investigation to the long-chain FAs ({\textgreater} C22 : 0) not to introduce errors due to aquatic contributions from algae and microorganisms. Results showed unambiguously that during base ﬂow, agricultural land contributed up to 65 \% of the suspended sediments, while forest was the dominant sediment source during high ﬂow. This indicates that connectivity of sediment source areas within the river changes between base and high ﬂow conditions. Uncertainty, which might occur in complex, large-scale studies due to undetected source attribution and/or CSSI signature degradation, is low because of limited data complexity in our study (i.e., two–three sources and two tracers).},
	language = {en},
	number = {5},
	urldate = {2019-01-08},
	journal = {Biogeosciences},
	author = {Alewell, Christine and Birkholz, Axel and Meusburger, Katrin and Schindler Wildhaber, Yael and Mabit, Lionel},
	month = mar,
	year = {2016},
	pages = {1587--1596},
}

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