A reassessment of the suspended sediment load in the Madeira River basin from the Andes of Peru and Bolivia to the Amazon River in Brazil, based on 10 years of data from the HYBAM monitoring programme

Vauchel, Philippe; Santini, William; Guyot, Jean‐Loup; Moquet, Jean-Sébastien; Martinez, Jean‐Michel; Espinoza, Jhan Carlo; Baby, Patrice; Fuertes, Oscar; Noriega, Luis; Puita, Oscar; Sondag, Francis; Fraizy, Pascal; Armijos, Elisa; Cochonneau, Gérard; Timouk, Franck; Oliveira, Eurides de; Filizola, Naziano; Molina, Jorge; Ronchail, Josyane

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.07.018

Cited by 53 publications

(71 citation statements)

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“…For the Tamshiyacu, Caracarai, and Porto Velho gauging station, we used the rating curve between the level of the river and water discharge., The Manning-Strickler equation was used to calculate daily discharge. In the Manacapuru, Fazenda Vista Alegre, and Óbidos gauging stations, where there is no direct relationship due to backwater (Meade et al 1991, Vauchel et al 2017.…”

Section: Data On Discharge Rainfall and Sedimentologymentioning

confidence: 98%

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Rainfall control on Amazon sediment flux: synthesis from 20 years of monitoring

Armijos

Crave

Espinoza

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Commun.

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The biodiversity and productivity of the Amazon floodplain depend on nutrients and organic matter transported with suspended sediments. Nevertheless, there are still fundamental unknowns about how hydrological and rainfall variability influence sediment flux in the Amazon River. To address this gap, we analyzed 3069 sediment samples collected every 10 days during 1995-2014 at five gauging stations located in the main rivers. We have two distinct fractions of suspended sediments, fine (clay and silt) and coarse (sand), which followed contrasting seasonal and long-term patterns. By taking these dynamics into account, it was estimated, for first time, in the Amazon plain, that the suspended sediment flux separately measured approximately 60% fine and 40% coarse sediment. We find that the fine suspended sediments flux is linked to rainfall and higher coarse suspended sediment flux is related with discharge. Additionally this work presents the time lag between rainfall and discharge, which is related to the upstream area of the gauging. This result is an important contribution to knowledge of biological and geomorphological issues in Amazon basin.

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Section: Data On Discharge Rainfall and Sedimentologymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The data for both the discharge and the suspended sediments are stored and processed with Hydraccess software (http://www.ore-hybam.org/index.php/eng/sofware/Hydraccess). Details of the field measurements are described in Armijos et al (2017) and Vauchel et al (2017).…”

Section: Data On Discharge Rainfall and Sedimentologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rainfall control on Amazon sediment flux: synthesis from 20 years of monitoring

Armijos

Crave

Espinoza

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Commun.

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“…Such large sections experience pronounced sediment concentration gradients and grain size sorting, in both the vertical and the transverse directions (e.g. Curtis et al, 1979;Vanoni, 1979Vanoni, , 1980Horowitz and Elrick, 1987;Filizola and Guyot, 2004;Filizola et al, 2010;Bouchez et al, 2011;Lupker et al, 2011;Armijos et al, 2013Armijos et al, , 2016Vauchel et al, 2017). The balance between the local hydrodynamic conditions and the sediment characteristics (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These methods follow a relevant grid of sample points (Xiaoqing, 2003, Filizola andGuyot, 2004;Bouchez et al, 2011;Armijos et al, 2013;Vauchel et al, 2017). The mean concentration 〈 〉 [mg L -1 ] is determined by combining all samples into a single representative 15 discharge-weighted concentration value, which is depth-integrated and cross-sectionally representative (Xiaoqing, 2003;Horowitz et al, 2015;Vauchel et al, 2017). In the present study, the spatial distribution of the concentration within the cross section is summarized into a single concentration profile that is assumed to be representative of the suspension regime along the river reach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An index concentration method for suspended load monitoring in large rivers of the Amazonian foreland

Santini¹,

Camenen²,

Coz³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Because increasing climatic variability and anthropic pressures have affected the sediment dynamics of large tropical rivers, long-term sediment concentration series have become crucial for understanding the related socio-economic and environmental impacts. For operational and cost rationalization purposes, index concentrations are often sampled in the flow and used as a surrogate of the cross-sectional average concentration. However, in large rivers where suspended sands are responsible for vertical concentration gradients, this index method can induce large uncertainties in the matter fluxes. 20Assuming that physical laws describing the suspension of grains in turbulent flow are valid for large rivers, a simple formulation is derived to model the ratio ( ) between index and average concentrations. The model is validated using an exceptional dataset (1330 water samples, 249 concentration profiles, 88 particle size distributions (PSDs) and 494 discharge measurements) that was collected between 2010 and 2017 in the Amazonian foreland. The prediction requires the estimation of the Rouse number ( ), which summarizes the balance between the suspended particle settling and the turbulent lift, weighted 25 by the ratio of sediment to eddy diffusivity ( ). Two particle size groups, washload and sand, were considered to evaluate .Discrepancies were observed between the evaluated and measured , that were attributed to biases related to the settling and shear velocities estimations, but also to diffusivity ratios ≠ 1. An empirical expression taking into account these biases was then formulated to predict accurate estimates of , then (∆ = ±0.03) and finally .The proposed model is a powerful tool for optimizing the concentration sampling. It allows for detailed uncertainty analysis 30 on the average concentration derived from an index method. Finally, this model can be coupled with remote sensing and hydrological modeling to serve as a step toward the development of an integrated approach for assessing sediment fluxes in poorly monitored basins.Earth Surf. Dynam. Discuss., https://doi.

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“…Large dams change a river's ecology and can result in habitat fragmentation (Fearnside, 2014), fisheries collapse (McCarthy et al, 2008), changes to sedimentation regimes (Lingon, Dietrich, & Thrush, 1995), large releases of greenhouse gases (Fearnside & Pueyo, 2012), and loss of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity (Rosenberg, 2000). The impacts of hydropower development can be long lasting or permanent, but hydropower dams have a finite lifespan and those in the tropics tend to have a shorter lifespan due to higher sedimentation rates (Vauchel et al, 2017). Unfortunately, assessing the impacts of dam development in high biodiversity, data-poor regions such as Central Africa can be challenging as conservationists and decision-makers often suffer from a lack of baseline data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the distribution of freshwater fish diversity using a multispecies habitat suitability model to assess impacts of proposed dam development in Gabon, Africa

Cutler

Olivos

Sidlauskas

et al. 2019

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Data scarcity impedes a comprehensive impact assessment of the 38 dams currently proposed within the highly biodiverse central African nation of Gabon.Here, we present a multiple-species MaxEnt distribution modeling approach to assess species richness for freshwater fishes at the landscape level and demonstrate its utility in identifying proposed dam sites in Gabon that fall in highly diverse areas. We modeled habitat suitability for 202 of Gabon's fresh and brackish water fish species based on georeferenced presence data from museum specimens and a set of ecologically meaningful environmental conditions. We removed poor performing species from the model and compiled the distributions of 114 well-performing species to generate a new metric, the species pseudorichness index (pR), defined as the cumulative number of species that are highly suited to the habitat in a given segment of river. We used pR as a proxy for true species richness and use this metric to evaluate the distribution of freshwater fish diversity relative to the proposed dam development in Gabon. We found that more than 80% of the proposed dams in Gabon overlap with areas of high pR, implying that planned hydroelectric development in Gabon may disproportionately affect high diversity areas. These dams deserve more focused baseline assessments and conservation action. This approach provides a rapid way to initiate a landscape-scale assessment of freshwater fish diversity to inform conservation decisions in areas that are species rich, but data poor.

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A reassessment of the suspended sediment load in the Madeira River basin from the Andes of Peru and Bolivia to the Amazon River in Brazil, based on 10 years of data from the HYBAM monitoring programme

Cited by 53 publications

References 53 publications

Rainfall control on Amazon sediment flux: synthesis from 20 years of monitoring

Rainfall control on Amazon sediment flux: synthesis from 20 years of monitoring

An index concentration method for suspended load monitoring in large rivers of the Amazonian foreland

Evaluating the distribution of freshwater fish diversity using a multispecies habitat suitability model to assess impacts of proposed dam development in Gabon, Africa

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