Using multiple composite fingerprints to quantify source contributions and uncertainties in an arid region

Fingerprinting sediment sources in mountainous catchments disturbed by plantation and construction activities in southern China

“…These studies include identifying diverse point and nonpoint sources, such as cropland (Huang et al, 2019), pasture land (Walling, 2005), harvested areas in forest environments (Smith et al, 2012), damaged road verges (Collins, Walling, Stroud, et al, 2010; Minella et al, 2008), channel banks/subsurface sources (Gellis et al, 2017; Li et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2020) and spatial geologic units, and determining tributary provenance (Collins & Walling, 2002). Moreover, most fingerprinting studies conducted in China have successfully identified the main sources of sediment deposits in catchments, particularly in areas with severe soil erosion, including the Loess Plateau (Zhang, Yang, et al, 2019), the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River (Shi et al, 2021), Southeast China (Lin et al, 2015), the black soil region of Northeast China (Chen et al, 2021), the karst region of Southwest China (Li et al, 2020) and the arid region of Northwest China (Niu et al, 2019). However, detailed surveys of sediment sources in the southern mountainous region of China are still scarce, and there is inherent uncertainty in transferring sediment fingerprinting analysis results from one region or environment to another.…”

Combining spectroscopy and magnetism with geochemical tracers to improve the discrimination of sediment sources in a homogeneous subtropical catchment

“…The sediment fingerprinting technique has been increasingly used in catchments worldwide to quantify the relative source contributions to river sediment (Walling, 2013). The method offers an effective way to calculate the contribution of diffuse sources of sediment and contaminants, providing useful information to focus efforts on controlling major soil erosion problems (Niu et al, 2019;Nosrati and Collins, 2019;Torres Astorga et al, 2018;Uber et al, 2019). However, many challenges require further research with sediment source fingerprinting such as the selection of tracers to analyse and the grouping of the main sediment sources (Pulley et al, 2017b;Smith et al, 2015).…”