Abstract
AbstractReducing soil erosion and sediment delivery into rivers is a major aim for land management in New Zealand. Therefore, it is important to identify areas of sediment generation and their relationship to in‐stream suspended sediment concentrations and water quality attributes. It is possible to infer and assess sediment sources and dynamics using storm event suspended sediment concentration‐discharge hysteresis shape and loop direction. Research in small catchments has achieved some success; however, research in larger (>103 km2) catchments has shown the inherent difficulty of interpreting hysteresis patterns at larger scales. In this paper, we use a nested, long‐term suspended sediment monitoring program across a large catchment (3,903 km2: Manawatū in New Zealand) to address these challenges. We evaluate the hysteresis patterns of five major tributaries (subcatchment areas 329–1,298 km2) of the Manawatū River together with the hysteresis patterns at the gauged catchment outlet. Hysteresis patterns of the Manawatū subcatchments can be characterized as predominantly clockwise, that is, high hysteresis index (HI) value. Larger storms (discharge >2 × 107 m3) increase the likelihood of clockwise hysteresis directions, whereas smaller storms (discharge <2 × 107 m3) are more likely to be anticlockwise. The link between suspended sediment concentration‐discharge hysteresis and subcatchment sediment sources becomes increasingly attenuated within the larger subcatchments. High antecedent discharge negatively correlates to HI values, suggesting conditions immediately before the storm have an influence on whether the catchment is “primed” or “exhausted” with available sediment. The different storm categories indicate that within this catchment, whereas hysteresis patterns vary due to the spatial origin of discharge and sediment to some extent, storm magnitude has a stronger impact on hysteresis dynamics than spatial origin.
Published Version
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