Upland sediment supply and its relation to watershed sediment delivery in the contemporary mid-Atlantic Piedmont (USA)

We use sediment accumulation in ponds and reservoirs to examine upland sediment sources and sinks in the Piedmont physiographic region of Maryland, USA. In zero-order and first-order watersheds, sediment yield is greatest from suburban land cover, followed by agriculture and forest. The idea that sediment yield is small from mature suburban development appears to not be correct. First-order channel enlargement is an important sediment source, causing sediment yield to increase from zero-order to first-order watersheds. Nonchannel sources provide one-third to two-thirds of the upland sediment load. Long-term sediment accumulation in a reservoir at fifth-order indicates that cumulative sediment load from upland areas is reduced by one-quarter by net valley bottom sedimentation. If upland supply exceeds the load delivered from a watershed, sediment must accumulate along valley bottoms. In our study watershed, net sedimentation rate (sedimentation less erosion) averaged over valley bottom area is 2.6 mm/y, a value that is similar to independent direct measurements of sedimentation and erosion in a nearby watershed. Evaluation of the relative contributions to sediment mass balance of upland supply, valley bottom sedimentation and erosion, and watershed delivery indicates that, if valley-bottom rates of sedimentation exceed erosion as indicated by recent studies, then the proportion of watershed sediment delivery derived from stream banks is necessarily small. Although sediment yield estimated from stream gage records is similar in magnitude to that from ponds for watersheds smaller than 20 km(2), sediment yield from reservoir sedimentation is a factor of five larger than that estimated from gage records for watersheds larger than 140 km(2). This observation confirms that the different methods provide very different estimates of sediment yield. This possibility is reinforced by a sediment yield of 14 Mg/km(2)/y from a gage immediately above a reservoir with a yield of 142 Mg/km(2)/y based on reservoir accumulation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.