River sediment flux and shelf sediment accumulation rates on the Pacific Northwest margin

Abstract

To test the generality of insight obtained from recent STRATAFORM studies of northern California's Eel margin, river sediment sources and continental shelf sinks were examined on the Pacific Northwest margin from 38° to 44.5°N. River discharge and sediment concentration data acquired by the US Geological Survey were used to update long-term annual suspended-sediment loads for 17 rivers that range in basin area from 635 to ∼22,000 km 2. Resulting annual load estimates vary over 3 orders of magnitude (0.065–18×10 9 kg/yr), with major suspended-sediment fluxes supplied by, in decreasing order, the Eel, Klamath/Trinity, Mad, Rogue, Umpqua and Russian rivers. Down-core profiles of excess 210Pb and 137Cs were used to estimate sediment accumulation rates (SARs) at prescribed depths (70 and 110 m) and distances (0–40-km north and south along-shelf) from each of the major rivers. SARs were found to vary much less than the river flux estimates, and are mostly in the range of 1.5 to 6 mm/yr. Most significantly, shelf SARs on the other Pacific Northwest margins are only slightly less than those observed on the Eel shelf, implying that much higher proportions of riverine sediment are retained on those shelves. Likely reasons that the Eel dispersal system exhibits greater off-shelf transport are (1) the narrower and steeper shelf geometry, and (2) the existence of a newly documented cross-isobath sediment transport mechanism that involves wave-modulated fluid mud flows. Testing whether the fluid mud flows are a consequence of the Eel River basin's high sediment yield, and are thus unique to the Eel, or are caused by intense wave energy during discharge events, and hence are operative on many other margins, awaits future bottom-boundary layer measurements.