Suspended load

Rivers transport suspended sediments derived from the disintegration of basin surface layers. With reduced velocity, sediment is deposited in the river channel. The finest material is carried to the sea. It has been estimated that the average mechanical denudation rate for continents is 0.056 mm year (35). This is based on a total suspended load of 13.5 x 10 metric tons year (S). Presently, about two-thirds of the world s total suspended sediment load derives from Southern Asia and large Pacific Islands. Berner has estimated the increase in sediment loss in the U.S. and world since prehuman times to be approximately 200% (35). Current estimated erosion rate from the major land forms is provided in Table I. The relatively recent construction of large sediment trapping dams that normally caused sediment to be deposited in river valleys or transported to the ocean has drastically reduced sediment yields in great rivers. 

The material transported by rivers consists of dissolved ions (dissolved load), sediment suspended in the flow (suspended load), and sediment transported along the bed of the river (bedload). The total load and the proportion of the load represented by these phases varies widely among rivers in different environments. In particular, climate, topography, and erosion influence the amount and composition of riverine sediment loads. 

The physical transport of particles in a river occurs by two primary modes bedload and suspended load. Bedload consists of material moved along the bed of the river by the tractive force exerted by flowing water. Bedload may roll or hop along the bottom, and individual particles may remain stationary for long periods of time between episodes of movement. Suspended load consists of material suspended within the flow and that is consequently advected by flowing water. Rivers and streams are naturally turbulent, and if the upward component of turbulence is sufficient to overcome the settling velocity of a particle, then it will tend to remain in suspension because the particles become resuspended before they can settle to the bottom of the flow. Suspended load consists of the finest particles transported by a river, and in general is composed of clay- and silt-sized... 

The travel time for suspended load is controlled by the flow velocity and the distance to the basin outlet. Flow velocities do not change much downstream in a typical river system (Leopold, 1953) and typically range from 0.1 to several m/s. Hence, suspended load should be able to travel at least 10 to 100 km per day and the travel time for suspended sediment to traverse even the longest rivers in the world should be less than a season. Although some of the suspended load will be deposited in floodplains, the component of the suspended load that does not get sequestered in terrestrial depositional environments is delivered almost as fast as the water that it flows in. Bedload travels much more slowly. In mountain drainage basins, the velocity of individual bedload clasts is on the... 

Fig. 9-8 Histogram of dissolved solids of samples from the Orinoco and Amazon River basins and corresponding denudation rates for morpho-tectonic regions in the humid tropics of South America (Stal-lard, 1985). The approximate denudation scale is calculated as the product of dissolved solids concentrations, mean armual runoff (1 m/yr), and a correction factor to account for large ratios of suspended load in rivers that drain mountain belts and for the greater than average annual precipitation in the lowlands close to the equator. The correction factor was treated as a linear function of dissolved solids and ranged from 2 for the most dilute rivers (dissolved solids less than lOmg/L) to 4 for the most concentrated rivers (dissolved solids more than 1000 mg/L). Bedrock density is assumed to be 2.65 g/cm. (Reproduced with permission from R. F. Stallard (1988). Weathering and erosion in the humid tropics. In A. Lerman and M. Meybeck, Physical and Chemical Weathering in Geochemical Cycles," pp. 225-246, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.)...

The presence of unstable and cation-rich minerals in the suspended load and bed material of rivers that drain the Andes indicates that... 

Describe the factors that limit moimtain height. How does this relate to the areas of the Earth that deliver the largest dissolved and suspended loads to the oceans ... 

Mean annual load in Sastago (Fig. 1, SMS) during 2002-2004. Almost all of this was transported as suspended load... 

JMean annual suspended load in Mora d Ebre (Fig. 1, MEMS) during 2005-2008 kSource [40]... 

Sediment Load in the Lower Ebro 5.2.1 Suspended Load... 

Roy S, Gaillardet J, Allegre CJ (1999) Geochemistry of dissolved and suspended loads of the Seine River, France anthropogenic impact, carbonate and silicate weathering. Geochim Cosmochim Acta 63 1277-1292... 

Relatively low permeability alluvial soils (silt, clay, and sandy clay), which corresponds with perching layers or aquitards. These soils were interpreted to be deposited in a low-energy, suspended load, fluvial-deltaic environment outside of channel zones. 

Figure 18. Orinoco River tributary Li isotope data (Huh et al. 2001). Tie lines connect samples pairs of dissolved (open symbol) and suspended load (filled symbol) for tributaries draining the Andes (circle) and those draining cratonic area (triangle). Isotopic compositions of suspended loads were similar in both cases, but the dissolved loads of Andes drainages were uniformly isotopically heavier. This difference was attributed not to lithology in the headwaters, but to transport- versus reaction-limited weathering conditions.

Pre-anthropocene suspended load carried by rivers as estimated by Syvitski, J. E M, et al. (2005). Science, 308 376-380. 

Direct evidence supporting the occurrence of reverse weathering has proven difficult to obtain for two reasons. First, the same kinds of clay minerals produced by this process are also transported to the ocean as part of the suspended load in river runoff. Second, the rate of reverse weathering is so slow that laboratory studies of this process are difficult to conduct. 

Rivers transport clay minerals primarily as part of their suspended load (silts and clays). The silt-size fraction is composed of quartz, feldspars, carbonates, and polycrystalline rocks. The clay-sized fraction is dominated by the clay minerals illite, kaolinite, chlorite, and montmorillonite. In addition to suspended particles, rivers carry as a bed load larger size fractions. The bed load constitutes only 10% of the total river load of particles and is predominantly quartz and feldspar sands. 

River transport of clay minerals into the ocean is spatially and temporally variable. The global annual suspended load of river sediment into coastal waters currently averages 12.6 X 10 ton. This flux is approximately 10% less than was delivered before humans began damming rivers. (One notable exception is the Mississippi River, whose sediment load has increased due to very high rates of soil erosion. The riverine sediments deposited in the mouth of the Mississippi River form one of the world s largest deltas.)... 

By trapping the sediment from used alpine waters, reservoirs reduce the transport of suspended load to residual flow reaches. In these sections with a reduced channel flow, the tractive force and shear stress is drastically reduced. This additionally reduces the bed load transport, which may then result in solid matter originating from unaffected tributary streams remaiiung in the main channel, thus significantly increasing the debris-flow hazard for episodic high water discharge [36]. 

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